Is there some ritual meal in France involving the very wealthy poking their head through a curtain and devouring a raw bird?
A friend of mine swears that there is.
DEVOUR, RAW, BIRD and CURTAIN is not getting me anywhere with the search engines. I’m ankle deep in teenage angst poetry. If only I knew what the dish was called!
Does anyone have an inkling?
My question really has two parts:
John
Can’t help you with the answer. Just to say I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the French do that.
Imagine sawing frogs in half and eating the bums and legs.
Have you tried “French eating habits”?
Yes, I’ve seen this, but I can’t remember what it was called.
It was a hunting issue; they were wantonly shooting some kind of (smallish) migratory songbird and eating them, the species was in danger of extinction, so the French government outlawed the killing of the birds, a group of hunters then set up a fake ‘tradition’ where they claimed that eating them under a sheet was part of some ritual that their secret society practiced, and they were thus exempt from the hunting ban
Hey! Hunters are weirdos… 
And frog legs are goooooooood! well actually the sauce they came in is good, they don’t really taste like anything!
I first heard about this in an essay on the last meal of Mitterand. Yep, it’s little tiny songbirds - called “orlotons”. The essay was written by Michael Paterniti, and was published in Esquire - I can’t find the issue right now, but it’s being republished in a book called Love and Murder.
Here’s a restaurant that will serve them as part of a special meal. Be warned - the cost is $32,000 for a party of four, although it includes some pretty impressive wines.
Admittedly, cites for this are sparse, and I certainly can’t pony up the cash for it, but there you go.
They certainly are eaten whole. If you’re planning to find out more the correct spelling is ortolan. Google threw up a few references ;).
Thanks for the correction, everton. I got my spelling from the menu I referenced - you’d think for that kind of cash, they’d get the spelling right.
[sub]The other possibility, of course, is that I made a mistake. I refuse to entertain that possibility. In case any of you are about to point it out, I have my fingers in my ears. La la la la la…[/sub]
You’re welcome. Of course the real mistake would be spending 32 thousand bucks on a dinner for four – no wonder it’s called La Folie!