Eating the Ortolan Bunting
The Ortolan Bunting: The Ortolan Bunting is an Eurasian songbird whose northern European population is now nearing extinction due to its over-consumption as French haute-cuisine. The EU banned the entrapment and sale of the bird in 1979. The French government, however, has been much slower to enact laws due to the great national love for the dish. Recent government response to the sharp decline in Ortolan’s numbers have renewed the prohibition and yet this illegality only fuels the mystique of what has been widely agreed upon as the ultimate French dining experience. The song birds are captured live with nets; they can fetch 150 Euro per live bird on the black market. The “street price”—for the bird will appear on no menu—is typically around 190 Euro, available only if you are familiar enough with the chef, or rich enough to transcend the law. As many as 30,000 wild ortolans are still being captured illegally in the South of France every summer during the bird’s southern migrations.
Die Eating Ortolans: Though the consumption of the Ortolan may go back to the Roman empire, the contemporary recipe for this rituel gastronomique is attributed to the 18th century food-writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Since then the dish has become indisputably and essentially French. You will recognize his most famous quote: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” It should come as no surprise then that the Ortorlan has been described as symbolic of the French soul; when one consumes this delicacy it is as if you are eating the innermost part of Frenchness itself. Eating the Ortolan Bunting is so exquisite that the experience can only be followed by immediate death. British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli announced in his memoir: “All paradise opens! Let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft music.” Likewise Robert Louis Stevenson: “To live reading such reviews and die eating ortolans — such is my aspiration.” The French president François Mitterand famously ate not one but two of these illegal songbirds at his last meal before his death in 1996.
How to cook it: once captured the live bird is kept in a cage to eat for 21 days. The cage is covered in a blanket in order to simulate night, the only time when the bird will feed. Depending on your degree of cruelty you may also blind the bird to the same effect. The bird then eats in total darkness, eating grain and figs until it doubles or triples in weight. Once the day of its consumption arrives it is pulled from the cage and drowned in Armagnac, a French brandy. After it is properly marinated in this same brandy the bird is plucked and roasted whole in a cassoulet placed in a very hot oven for eight minutes. And by whole I mean the body entire: beak, brains, wings, organs, feet.
How to Eat it: One eats the Ortolan Bunting immediately once out of the oven. You grasp the bird by the beak and put the whole hot body into your mouth and chew as one mouthful. The beak is discarded. You may discard the bones if you wish, or they may be crunched and swallowed. Traditionally, as described by Savarin, one must cover your head in a napkin while one consumes the Ortolan. This is to a:) retain the aroma; b:) hide the mess from fellow diners; c:) hide your shame.
Anthony Bourdain’s Report: “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 wondrous 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.”
