French chefs call to put 'cruellest ever dish' - a tiny bird eaten WHOLE - back on menu

One drapes the napkin over your head to hide one's shame from God.

They should scrape that law just for the joy of seeing all those crazy nutjobs in meltdown mode in the Guardian comment section.

Yuck.

Can't they be bred in captivity? That'd solve the dwindling numbers of wild ortolans.

Schmooblydong.

Shame!

Mitterrand ate it as part of his last meal as it is considered by some to embody the essence of France.

It's disgusting, but compared to how foie gras is produced and how other animals are slaughtered, the cruelty isn't all that unusual, is it?

R4 that isn't the point. At the top of the foodie chain, there is a sick staring contest.

Cover your head all you want, I see what you are doing.

Seriously, why can't some of these birds be raised in captivity?

It'll provide a little boost to the economy, foodies get their way, and if the animal rights nutters break in an free captive ortolans - it'll boost wild populations! Captive breeding sounds like a win for everyone, except the ortolans.

Do ortolans taste significantly different than other tiny songbirds?

If some restaurant were to put, say, sparrows or finches on the menu, could anyone alive tell the difference after it was drowned in booze?

Jesus god that's revolting.

Barf.

Well, drowning in expensive brandy is infinitely better to me than the usual factory method they use to kill birds we eat - slitting their throat or just cutting off their heads while alive.

At first glance I thought this was about eating a live bird whole - that would be weird. Roasting it once dead is how we normally prepare them. We eat chicken and turkey every day, what does it matter whether the head is attached or not. Eating a bird is eating a bird.

I would much prefer having my head chopped off in one swift slice to being drowned. That's so weird.

R5, Roger, you get Frannie to drown the thing and I'll get the pay-per-view code from Stan. Barbra does Celine!

R12, tastes like chicken.

Obligatory

Roger eats it while watching "Barbra Does Celine" and achieves nirvana

[quote]Diners would then drape a large napkin over their head before eating it whole

The fucking French.

And or course, "Gigi"

A napkin over the head?

How stupid, common, and vulgar.

Parlez Vous YUCK!

Also obligatory

Does not taste like chicken.

Also, do the feathers dissolve or...?

I'm dining at a Ducasse restaurant New Year's Eve in Paris. Hope this is an option! Sounds like great conversation.

Fat Americans try the same eating technique with Thanksgiving turkey.

And here I thought the Chinese were the only ones who love to slaughter rare creatures for the most ridiculous reasons.

I hate Jeremy Clarkson. It disgusts me that that pig now gets about 60% of BBC America's airtime. He's one of those pigs who delights in saying bigoted shitstain things and then yells "PC!" when called on his shit.

Hope the rich fucks choke on it.

Anything that is considered "a delicacy" is usually just over-rated and over-priced, and used to lord it over others, as in: Oh?? You haven't had ortolan??? It's the same as hipster's coming back from Vietnam and bragging that they ate dog.

Btw, aren't "foodies" a joke now? Is it still "in" to be bragging about how you had to smuggle horse fat into the US because the only French fries you'll deign to eat are those that have been cooked in it???

A TOPAZ?!?!? Among my jewels!?!?!?

Savages!

This isn't as cruel as living-monkey brains or the Chinese dish where you eat a live fish as if writhes on the plate. The birds, at least are dead as they are consumed.

Lord. The world is overrun with fraus and phonies.

As if, R36!

Ever had potatoes fried in duck fat, R33? Heavenly!

And some expensive delicacies are overrated (lobster), and some are genuinely and uniquely delicious (truffles). None are really worth an unholy fortune, of course. And "Molecular Gastronomy" is an offense to the reasonable mind, if you need all that weirdness at dinner then you've lost the capacity to enjoy the things that really matter.

[quote]The birds, at least are dead as they are consumed.

No. Thus the shame.

I wonder what one of these would taste like?

R39, care to explain how the birds are still alive after being drowned in booze and then roasted?

They must be tough little bastards.

Well, I'm having ambergris on a toast point!

Had this in Paris in the 80's. Did not cover my head with a napkin, though. It tastes amazing. Would certainly have it again if the option was available. Also ate horse meat in Belgium. Have yet to try monkey brain but hope to on an upcoming trip.

[quote]It's the same as hipster's coming back from Vietnam and bragging that they ate dog.

[quote]Is it still "in" to be bragging about how you had to smuggle horse fat into the US because the only French fries you'll deign to eat are those that have been cooked in it???

You need to freshen up your references, Mee Maw.

And the homoerotic Ortolan scene from Hannibal. All camera angles were intentional.

It sounds delicious!

I remember this referenced in an Anthony Bourdin show. I can't recall if he ate it or just described it. It sounded ghoulish.

This is disgusting. I feel like it's natural for most, if not all, people to have sociopathic traits and every day that passes just continues to back up this feeling.

Bourdain talked about eating it on "The Colbert Report."

[quote] I feel like it's natural for most, if not all, people to have sociopathic traits and every day that passes just continues to back up this feeling.

True, very few of us are willing to admit it.

This presents an opportunity for an interesting discussion. Earlier tonight I was shucking king crab in preparation for tomorrow's feast. My family and I joked about the first time us "kids" saw a live crab. It was ugly. We were afraid of it, and we cried. It looked like a monstrous spider. We think nothing of killing ugly things like insects and spiders and crabs. They don't have big fat cheeks, so they deserve to die!

But killing and eating a fattened bird is outrageous? Is that because it's cute? I'm not saying I disagree. I just was thinking about this before I saw this thread.

It's not the fact that it's a cute little bird that's outrageous and decadent. It's the manner in which the bird is prepared, force-fed to fatten it up and then drowned in cognac before it's cooked.

Well I've made up my mind now--I'm becoming a vegetrarian.

[quote] force-fed to fatten it up and then drowned in cognac before it's cooked

I can think of worse ways to go than that. Sounds not bad, actually.

That sounds like something the aristocracy dreamed up just before they were guillotined.

There's actually a recipe in the Larousse gastronomique for lampreys served in a sauce made from their own blood. One thing you can say for the French, they're not picky eaters.

[quote]I wonder what one of these would taste like?

Curry.

[quote]There's actually a recipe in the Larousse gastronomique for lampreys served in a sauce made from their own blood. One thing you can say for the French, they're not picky eaters.

I just threw up.

A lot.

And then there's that Japanese delicacy. A live lobster, partially shelled, crawls around your table slowly dying while the "gourmets" use chopsticks to rip chunks from the exposed live flesh.

Meanwhile, in L.A., a Pilipino restaurant is being approved to serve dog for RELIGIOUS reasons. Only 3 a day though...

They shoot horses, don't they?

R60- Only when Michael Sarrazin rips your last pair of stockings....

How is this any different than eating pigeon or quail? Why is that okay but this is disgusting?

I'd eat it.

"A robin redbreast in a cage, puts all Heaven in a rage." -William Blake

I served this for Thanksgiving. It was a big hit. Everyone loved the theatrics of putting the veil over their heads.

[quote]there is a culinary market for aborted fetuses

Hmmmm. Braised babies without the pesky bones. Yum!!

It's the dish that Gigi's aunt teaches her to eat in the Leslie Caron movie!

I hate the French.

Yes, R67, we know. See R22.

Two questions:

1. What's so special about ortolans, other than that they are an endangered bird? Couldn't you substitute any small bird like a goldfinch, canary or titmouse?

2. Are the feathers removed before cooking?

The food stylist from the HANNIBAL show made them out of marzipan.

Filipinos have their disgusting BALUT, which is just as disgusting but extremely common, often sold at street carts.

Fucking amateurs.

[quote]Former French president Francois Mitterand ate ortolan in one of his final meals eight days before he died, first tucking into 30 oysters, followed by foie gras and capon, then two of the tiny plucked birds.

It only took him 8 days to die from that?

The essence of France, LOL!

Animal cruelty for human amusement is wrong.

Demo:

R62 I think the outrage is focused on the fact that they are songbirds with apparently a beautiful sound, and the fact they are an endangered species.

The outrage is that keeping an animal dark 24/7, then forcefeeding it, then drowning it in Armagnac, then roasting, plucking, then eating it whole including its guts is pathologically fetishistic. It wouldn't even have that many calories.

It's a bunting. Remember the old nursery rhyme,

Bye, baby Bunting,

Father's gone a-hunting,

Mother's gone a-milking,

Sister's gone a-silking,

Brother's gone to buy a skin

To wrap the baby Bunting in

The monkey-brains eating scene in FACES OF DEATH on YouTube is so disturbing and awful that I won't even link it here. Just horrific.

I was served this years ago at a dinner in France. I had no idea what it was (it was just a small bird to me). I didn’t eat it whole, and I remember I didn’t enjoy it at all.

Not really, R1. You wear the napkin over the head because you're spitting out beak and bones while eating it whole. The "hiding your shame" thing was a publicity stunt added years later.

Without frying it? I’d rather have chicken fried.

You ate meat? Please, let me smell your breath, please?

I saw a documentary about this, R11, and I am almost positive that the people who want to eat these specifically want wild birds caught, briefly force-fed fatty foods, then drowned. Something about the taste. You know how foodies are.

There are several songbirds used for dishes like this and they are becoming extinct.

r83, the entire bird is crunched up and eaten, bones and beak included. As French Chef Maite explains it in her video where she dines on an Ortolan, you wear the napkin because the bird is so fatty that the grease runs down your chin as you eat it.

There was a scene in a "Billions" episode entitled "The Last Ortolan" last season in which the "delicacy" was served to Bobby and Wags at a private dinner.

The chef, who joins them for that course, warns that the indulgence of "One is bliss, two is gluttony." The fate of the tiny bird parallels the storyline.

^^^in the case of Mitterand, it was explained that the napkin collects and concentrates the smell (and thus the taste) of the tiny dead drunk bird in the nose and mouth of the eater rather than allow it to dissipate into the air.

Anyway, the French are strange.

I also first learned about this on Billions.

But I already knew, The French are disgusting.

You are all certainly full of judgment.

I want to try this

The French are the Chinese of Europe. Totally indifferent to animal welfare, and in this case, whether they kill off an endangered species.

Do they also eat the shit of the bird, or is it scraped out?

Yes they eat the shit.

Quelle Tragic!

The ortolan dish tastes of hazelnut and game, and the crunch of delicate bone makes one feel like the dish was sprinkled with nuts.

[QUOTE]The outrage is that keeping an animal dark 24/7, then forcefeeding it, then drowning it in Armagnac, then roasting, plucking, then eating it whole including its guts is pathologically fetishistic.

Your description of it makes me horny for some reason.

Seems that could be easily replicated with a piece of Muscovy duck marinated in Armagnac, and coated with roasted hazelnuts R97.

[quote]the crunch of delicate bone makes one feel like the dish was sprinkled with nuts.

Yes, wonderful. Just remember, you're eating it whole, intestines, excrement, and all.

I’m never going to eat in a Chinese restaurant again. Haven’t been in one where the hygiene standards were good. Not a one.

Could turduckenort become a thing?

[quote]There are several songbirds used for dishes like this and they are becoming extinct.

When has that ever happened

It must make one feel God-like as you eat these creatures whole.

R25, wherever you are, bless you. Utterly hilarious!

[quote] The flames in the cocottes burn down, and the Ortolans are distributed, one to each guest. Everyone at this table knows what to do and how to do it. We wait for the sizzling flesh and fat before us to quiet down a bit. We exchange glances and grins and then, simultaneously, we place our napkins over our heads, hiding our faces from God, and with burning fingertips lift our birds gingerly by their hot skulls, placing them feet-first into our mouths – only their heads and beaks protruding.

[quote]In the darkness under my shroud, I realize that in my eagerness to fully enjoy the experience, I’ve closed my eyes. First comes the skin and the fat. It’s hot. So hot that I’m drawing short, panicky, circular breaths in and out – like a high-speed trumpet player, breathing around the ortolan, shifting it gingerly around my mouth with my tongue so I don’t burn myself. I listen for the sounds of jaws against bone around me but hear only others breathing, the muffled hiss od rapidly moving air through teeth under a dozen linen napkins. There’s a vestigal flavor of Armagnac, low-hanging fumes of airborne fat particles, an intoxicating dekicious miasma. Time goes by. Seconds? Moments? I don’t know. I hear the first snap of tiny bones from somewhere near and decide to brave it. I bring my molars down and through my bird’s rib cage with a wet crunch and am rewarded with a scalding hot rush of burning fat and guts down my throat. Rarely have pain and delight combined so well. I’m giddily uncomfortable, breathing in short, controlled gasps as I continue slowly – ever so slowly – to chew. With every bite, as the thin bones and layers of fat, meat, skin, and organs compact in on themselves, there are sublime dribbles of varied and wonderous ancient flavors: figs, Armagnac, dark flesh slightly infused with the salty taste of my own blood as my mouth is pricked by the sharp bones. As I swallow, I draw in the head and beak, which, until now, have been hanging from my lips, and blithely crush the skull.

I can't stand how Leslie Caron says "Awnt Ah-LEEES-syee-uh!"

Unless you are a vegetarian or vegan, please spare me the outrage over this.

Watch a few slaughterhouse videos. I dare you.

The cows/pigs/chickens/etc. you eat every day are subjected to horrors just as awful as what is done to these birds. And often their torture lasts much longer (kept in cages where they can't move, never see daylight, peck at and fight each other, piss and shit on each other, etc.). Just to then be drowned or hung upside down to have their throats cut.

Killing animals for food is just wrong, and way you slice it. And I find it disingenuous when people who eat meat pick and choose what offends them.

What part of "endangered species" escapes you, R108?

Ortolans are not endangered all over the world; only in France.

R106, would that be Mr. AB, wild man of the rotisserie?

R108, you tell it, says this here old-fart vegan!

How is it served? I picture a Bette as Baby Jane cone out, serve it and then lift up the metal cover and say....

"Here's your din din, Blanche."

So gross

[quote]Ortolans are not endangered all over the world; only in France.

And yet, as the thread title states, it is French chefs who want to put this back on the menu.

Personally I don get turning food into some silly superior complex game where you need to dine on lobster and other fancy dishes to show off your wealth and so called class and sophistication.

It just feels silly to me.

Goddamned humans. There are always new things coming up that make me ashamed to be a member of the human race. Like there are not enough things already for the rich motherfuckers to shove down their gullets.

This dish in particular, and the creepy mystique and practises surrounding the preparation and the actual eating of it seems awfully wicked. An abomination in fact. The Ortolans are especially beautiful little creatures too. I know the vegans and vegetarians take umbrage with such statements, and find them incongruous with their logic, but the fact remains it does unsettle me.

I'm a vegan & I don't get upset if omnivores reject something like this (it's despicable). I view it as perhaps a small step towards compassionate eating perhaps? Now go watch Dominion Movement and learn more...

What was written in r106 is just so WRONG! I can’t imagine people acting so monstrous. It’s perverted. It’s depraved. It’s relishing murder. Evil. Like something a serial killer would write. How could we get this low? Taking pleasure out of pain and suffering?

Ban it forever. We need to evolve away from this darkness.

I’m crying. Not only for the birds, but for the perpetrators. How could you stray so far from the ideals of your youth? Empathy is dying off in this world. I pray for people to be more aware.

And no, animal rights terrorism is NOT the way. We need to educate and enlighten people. Encourage personal accountability. Teach the value of all life.

I've learned a lot R119. I suppose I block much of it out of my mind as many do. I know the fallacies of my own rationalisations as I was a vegetarian for some years in my youth. I find this particular "delicacy" quite peculiar.

And eating bones is dangerous. Who would want to take that chance of having shards of something in your mouth? Should be banned for public health.

Plenty of people eat small fish, bones and shit and all. If I were served an ortolan I wouldn't eat it the proscribed way. I'd probably use a knife and a fork. I hate big bites.

Only thing not disgusting were one to look at it closely is to become a vegetarian.

I couldn't eat something that's still in its original shape or form. I have no problem with, say, chicken breasts , but a whole grilled chicken creeps me out for some reason. Same goes for fish (no problem with, say, fish sticks) or roasted pig (again, no problem with something like pulled pork).

So vile and satanic that I'd expect it from China.

That foodie is a moron anyway. Why would you put burning hot food in your mouth?Nothing burning your mouth ever tastes good.

There was a Paris restaurant in the 14th that served veal from a freshly slaughtered calf from the back room...they were forced to close because of the backlash, patrons could hear the calfs being slaughtered.

Reading R106 gave me an erection.

The French are execrable. It started with the Politics Of Grandeur.

R45 Gaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy!

I give up r106. Who wrote that? The marquis de Sade?

I have no problem with this.

r108 = Morrissey, triggered.

R45's link didn't work. Here's a better one.

R131, Anthony Bourdain

^^^And people were so shocked and sad when that sadistic fuck offed himself. Good riddance to barbarous trash.

Despicable.

R135, Tony was a real man, a man's manly man, at one with the universe. A sojourner who disdained the bourgeois constraints that trammel the midget-minded masses. He knew that, only in self-aggrandizement and the ruthless slaking of existential thirst, can Man ascend to the paradoxical pinnacle of The Eternal Maybe.

R138

Pretentious knob.

r138 = Jeffrey Wells.

R138, are you having us on?

I think so.

Sounds like something Anthony Bourdain would bang on about for shock value.

“Delicious!”

I truly cannot wait until humans are wiped from the earth. We’re a revolting species.

Insecurity drives us to very strange places and leads us to very strange actions just so we can show off and impress others.

A common burger with sauce dripping down my chin is ok by me. That's what napkins are actually for. If you can't watch other people eat (or be watched / judged while eating), don't eat with other people.

How is this crueller than any animal you eat?

R146 see r79.

The ritualistic elements, aside from the treatment of the barely edible bird and that bird is treated very very poorly - is disturbing.

R143, see r106.

je m'en fous

Well, in America we had this dish and it was called "sideshow geek bites off the head of a chicken." That was when pennies were made of real copper and were actually worth saving. Not like know when the kids have penny flushing parties and buy drugs on the internet.

Whatever happened to the speakeasies like Dapper Joe, which was then renamed Dapper One Eyed Joe and then Rolling One Eyed Joe? That Joe had a drinking problem but he ran the best speakeasy in the state! Could you imagine a speakeasy on the internet? What would that be, ordering Silver River Vodka, lime Jello and microfiber sheets from Target ? Rolling One Eyed Wheezy Joe's had silk sheets, made from the finest army surplus parachutes! And the condom machine was always full. I mean you had to wear a condom. They were really strict about that. Just ask Rolling One Eyed Wheezy Dickless Joe.

Brings back such sweet mammaries!

A vegan version.

The essence of France.

Not too surprising from a country whose residents evidently regularly abandon their pets when they go on vacation every summer. Most won't even bother coming back to retrieve the animal when they return, they just purchase a new one. Animal rights activists in France have tried to combat this issue, to mixed results.

People are pigs.

R143 good riddance to him.

The French are notoriously amoral.

Knowing how a bird is killed won't stop me from appreciating the Thanksgiving meal .

"... the ortolan bunting is seen by elite chefs and foodies as a rare culinary treat - one that is consumed whole, bones and all, with a napkin over one's head, for privacy and to better inhale its aroma."

Disgusting. I hope they choke on the bones.

R154 Interesting. I recently moved to Montreal and this is a thing here. Cats and dogs are semi-regularly found dead or almost dead after simply being left behind when people move out of their apartment/house. The French are fucked.

The French can be thoughtless jerks.