Game On

Went to dinner at a wild game restaurant last night in Denver, Colorado, called the "Buckhorn Exchange." Apparently, it's Denver's oldest restaurant, and holds Colorado's first liquor license. The restaurant is filled with the stuffed heads of numerous animals, from parakeets to wild boar. There isn't a surface in the restaurant that doesn't have some animal's head staring out at you. (Not recommended for vegetarians). Also, guns. The restaurant supposedly has a gun colletion worth several hundred thousand dollars.

The menu includes everything from rattlesnake to elk to buffalo. I had some buffalo sausage and duck for an appetizer, but wimped out and had a regular old (cow) tenderloin for dinner. Although the waiter recommended the rattlesnake, I just couldn't bring myself to eat it. I did enjoy the buffalo, however, and have always enjoyed duck. It made me wonder why certain animals are perfectly fine to eat, while others are not. In some parts of the world, of course, people eat horse quite happily. Some eat pig, while others find it blasphemous. I couldn't eat a raccoon or a skunk if I were starving to death (well, maybe ...). In Cormac McCarthy's amazing book, The Road, some people eat other humans to stay alive (while others can't bring themselves to do it).

Food is a very complicated thing -- driven by biology and culture. In a restaurant where everyone is eating rattlesnake, who's to say we shouldn't eat it, too?