A Denver institution has been serving Rocky Mountain oysters for 125 years

• The Buckhorn Exchange opened in 1893, making it Denver's oldest restaurant.
• Its signature dish is Rocky Mountain oysters, aka fried bull testicle.
• Insider's Joe Avella visited the restaurant to learn about its frontier origins.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Joe Avella: This is the Buckhorn Exchange, the oldest restaurant in Denver, Colorado. And unfortunately for me, their most popular dish? Rocky Mountain oysters, aka fried bull testicles. To the best of my knowledge, I've never eaten testicles. I mean, you know, not that I'm aware of. I came here to eat testicles, and testicles I shall eat. A historic landmark in the city of Denver, the Buckhorn Exchange has been selling Rocky Mountain oysters since 1893. That's a lot of balls.

Customer: Oh, they're good, they're good. You gotta try it. If you're here, you gotta try them. I've seen it on TV for so long, and it's just like, oh, it's been here for 100 years, I'm in Colorado, might as well just go and see it and taste it.

Joe Avella: How bad could it be? They've been doing it for, like, 140 years. [exhales] Let's do this. The Buckhorn Exchange is Denver's oldest restaurant, opened in 1893 by this man, Henry H. Zietz, also known as Shorty. Shorty was a skilled marksman and toured as a sharpshooter in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show along with Sitting Bull. Years later, the Buckhorn Exchange would be frequently visited by both Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull. The Buckhorn Exchange is directly across the street from the railroad. Shorty would allow railroaders to exchange their paychecks for US currency and give each man a token for a free sandwich and a beer. While that sounds generous, Shorty knew no railroader would stop after one beer and would end up spending most of the money they had just exchanged. In 1905, while campaigning for president, Teddy Roosevelt parked his train across the street from the Buckhorn Exchange, stopped in for dinner, and became friendly with Shorty.

Fred Slick: And Teddy convinced him to take him on hunts up in the Rockies, and they became friends. And so over the years, Teddy would contact the owner. When Teddy went on his famous African safari, he contacted the owner to go along as one of his guides in Africa. So we have many mounts that are here in the building that are from that hunt.

Joe Avella: Rocky Mountain oysters are bull testicles. They were the meat cowboys would eat at the end of a cattle drive. Only a certain amount of bulls were used as breeding stock, and the others were kept alive and fattened up for food, so they took off the testicles to control the population, and they also figured, hey, fresh meat.

Fred Slick: And that was kinda the delicacy at the end of the cattle drive.

Edgar Garcia: Well, you know, amazingly enough, we sell about 500 pounds a week of this stuff.

Joe Avella: You sell 500 pounds of testicles a week.

Edgar Garcia: Don't quote me, but it's between 300 and 500 pounds. [Joe laughs] I should know, I do the ordering.

Joe Avella: So almost a quarter a ton of testicles.

Edgar Garcia: Mm-hmm. Joe: OK. There's a demand for testicles in Colorado.

Edgar Garcia: Testicles festivals. Joe: You've yet to cut into one that was, how can I say?

Edgar Garcia: Full?

Joe Avella: Juicy, yeah.

Edgar Garcia: No.

Joe Avella: First, the membrane that covers the testicle is peeled off. Ooh, why do I feel that? Then the testicle is cut into thin slices.

Edgar Garcia: All right, so next step is, we'll go in the kitchen. Joe: So these are the freshest testicles you can get in Colorado. Edgar: In town, that's right.

Joe Avella: There you go. The slices are tossed in the flour and deep-fried. Once they're nice and crispy, they're plated with cocktail and horseradish sauce and ready to serve.

Edgar Garcia: There you go, plate full of balls.

Fred Slick: I think the fact that we haven't changed when everything around us has changed is very much why we've stayed around. And we try very hard to keep the menu as old-world as possible, so the meals you eat here are very similar to what you would've eaten, you know, back in the day or at the end of a long trail ride.

Customer: You aren't gonna find old West too often, even in Denver. It's, you were talking about it early tonight. Customer: It's disappearing.

Customer: It's disappearing, but they have kept it alive.

Fred Slick: The majority of our mounts are pre-World War I. They were all taken during a period of time when they were taken for food, they weren't taken for trophies. That golden eagle was given to the original owner by Sitting Bull. We have a cape buffalo that was shot on a hunt with Teddy Roosevelt.

Joe Avella: [inhaling] Oh, man, I can just smell the testicles coming. Thank you very much. Server: There's your oysters. Cocktail sauce, and a horseradish peppercorn sauce.

Joe Avella: OK, and what do we got here?

Server: I have a Kölsch beer that pairs well with Rocky Mountain oysters.

Fred Slick: I mean, these are so popular they invented a beer that pairs with them, so that's a good sign. These are very good, these are very good.

Server: You like them?

Joe Avella: Oh, I love them.

Server: Good!

Fred Slick: I'm pleasantly surprised by this. The texture is the hardest thing to get past, I think. It doesn't taste, like, tangy or, let's be honest, it doesn't taste salty. There's a bit of a... mm, mm, mm. It surprisingly is firm, firmer than I thought testicles would be. [laughs] I guess if I thought about it. That was a juicy one.

Customer: It's iconic, I mean, it definitely has a sort of own brand for itself, and it's something that folks talk about from states away, so definitely wanna make the trip out here and see it.

Fred Slick: It is a bit of a novelty. We get a lot of folks that chuckle and come in and think of it as novelty, but I would say the majority of the people leave and go, "They're actually pretty darn tasty."

Joe Avella: They have other non-testicle meats on the menu, like, she had mentioned elk, alligator, I think, you got quail, probably chicken. That'd be weird if they didn't have chicken. It's interesting that this is a staple on the menu, that it has been for so long. I think that's really cool. You feel like almost you're eating, like, a part of, like, frontier history when you're having this. To eat testicles is to eat history, American history.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was filmed in December 2019.

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