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: 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: 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: 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: You sell 500 pounds of testicles a week.
Edgar: Don't quote me, but it's between
300 and 500 pounds.
[Joe laughs] I should know,
I do the ordering.
Joe: So almost a quarter a ton of testicles.
Edgar: Mm-hmm. Joe: OK.
There's a demand for testicles in Colorado.
Edgar: Testicles festivals.
Joe: You've yet to cut into one that was, how can I say?
Edgar: Full? Joe: Juicy, yeah.
Edgar: No.
Joe: 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: 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: 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: There you go, plate full of balls.
Fred: 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: 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: [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: OK, and what do we got here?
Server: I have a Kölsch beer that pairs well
with Rocky Mountain oysters.
Joe: 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: Oh, I love them. Server: Good!
Joe: 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: 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: 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.