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Fans and Foes Chase Foie Gras
Produced by Adriene Hill on Wednesday, August 22, 2007
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Chicago’s foie gras ban went into effect a year ago today. But it hasn’t ended the fight over the delicacy. Foodies are still looking to score a little foie gras in the city. As part of our occasional series The Diner, Chicago Public Radio’s Adriene Hill takes a look at how well the ban is working.
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I’m here at Cyrano’s Bistro. It’s lunch time just after 1:15, waiting to talk to the chef, I’m at a table, looking at the lunch menu, no foie gras on it. I’ll ask the chef where it is, because I’ve heard I should be able to find it.
Chef Didier Durand has been at the forefront of the fight to overturn the ban. He says his downtown restaurant has been vandalized. And he seems a bit uncomfortable when I ask him:
HILL/CYRANO: If I came in right now for lunch and I asked for the foie gras, do you have it right now? What you want me to answer, yes? What do you want me to answer? Yes? You tell me. Yes.
Duran has coined a name for this sort of restaurant—the kind where you have to ask to get your foie gras.
CYRANO: Duck-easies…You know like speak-easies, duck-easies.
He doesn’t charge for the foie gras he serves—he charges for the salad that comes with it. It’s a strategy the spokesman for the Chicago Department of Public health says appears to be legal. The ban only prohibits the sale of foie gras. And Cyrano’s Bistro isn’t the only restaurant “giving it away.” That’s one reason Chicago Tribune food critic Phil Vettel says the ban is having little effect on Chicago’s dining scene.
VETTEL: I’m not sure there is a devise precise enought to measure something that small. Maybe Fermilab has something like this. This has been, I'm not even sure, a ripple.
Chicago diners who don’t want to wink at the waitstaff to get their foie gras fix can also head to the suburbs. So, I hop on the Metra, off to Evanston to find out what’s going on there. Just two stops out of the city, I’m at Chef’s Station. Barbara and Herb Ekland are eating dinner. Barbara just finished the foie gras appetizer.
BARBARA EKLAND: It was divine (laughs) just the way foie gras is supposed to be. Rich and supurb.
Barbara says they don’t go out of their way to eat at restaurants with foie gras on the menu. But she’ll order it if she can. Owner Peter Mills says he’s seen an up tick in interest... he’s selling more foie gras this year than last year…and a lot of people are talking about the ban.
MILLS: A lot of it’s the uniqueness of it. You know the fact that oh I couldn’t get it in the city, maybe I should try it. You know the SIGH The naughtiness of it. I don’t know how to put it, it’s not naughty it’s not bad...it’s just a unique product.
But the additional interest hasn’t completely offset the ban’s impact. A spokesman for Hudson Valley foie gras—a large domestic producer—says sales are off about 50% in the Chicago-AREA market…an area that includes the city and suburbs.
One of the bans biggest proponents is the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Spokesman Dan Hauff says he thinks the ban is working. He knows animal rights activists who are out looking for restaurants that are breaking the law.
HAUFF: The reports that I've gotten were that there were people that werelooking for it. I know there are plenty of people who care about this issue. You know we have people who collect signatures for petitions or talk to people on the steets about it or leaflet. And these people are looking for it and they don't see it. So I don't think it's out there as much as they are trying to pretend it is.
HADAC: We try to spend the minimum amount of time required on it.
Tim Hadac is with Chicago’s Department of Public Health. It is responsible for enforcing the ban. His office only gets a few complaints each month.
HADAC: Quite frankly every hour we spend on foie gras we don’t spend protecting people from food borne illness.
Chicago foodies and animal rights activists are both out looking for foie gras. But, they’re on a goose chase the health department isn’t all that interested in running.
For The Diner on Chicago Public Radio, I’m Adriene Hill.
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