Setting himself apart from the myriad of food writers in the Bay Area, SFoodie's new-ish editor W. Blake Gray stopped being polite, and just got real. As San Francisco residents sent a petition to the South Korean consulate on Tuesday, one that (bizarrely? rightfully? xenophobically?) asked their citizens to stop eating dogs and cats, Gray shared his own experiences dining on the noted household pets. One time was an accident, the other on purpose.
At a "cat roast" in Hong Kong, Blake explains his first dalliance with feline meat:
I sat at a stool and, not speaking Cantonese, pointed at the cat. A burly guy behind the counter pulled it off the hook, wielded a big butcher knife, and whack! -- chopped it in half. Then, whack! whack! whack! whack! -- he chopped it roughly into pieces, tossed them atop a bowl of rice, squirted a little sweet soy sauce on it, and placed it in front of me. While I contemplated it, he returned the other half of the cat to the hook. I got the bottom half, which I guess was better, and the cat head in the window also served as a better advertisement.So how was the cat? Tough and stringy. This makes sense, as cats are mostly muscle, except for pampered housecats, and even in Hong Kong people probably don't eat those except in times of famine. It wasn't very flavorful; it reminded me of three-day-old white-meat turkey. Bad kitty
Excuse us for a minute. We need to go pet and hug and kiss and hug and kiss and kiss our cat.
OK, we're back! So, while the first incident was intentional, Blake's taste buds-meet-canine experience came as a bit of a shock. He goes on to explain:
I was in Banaue in the Philippines, a transfer point for jeepneys. I had just gotten off one and had about an hour to kill. The waiting station was a small restaurant where everybody was eating some sort of dark brown stew. It smelled good, so I pointed at it and got a bowl.I was about halfway through it when a man came over and said, "Do you know what it is that you are eating?" When I said no, he said. "Bow. Bow wow. Bow wow wow."
I sat upright, and everyone laughed. Always pleased to provide entertainment abroad, I looked back at my bowl. That doggie was already gone, and I was still hungry. So I had some more.
Blake goes on to explain that dog meat was "tastier than cat," a dark, gamy meat that's "wonderfully tender, like rabbit."
Huh. We have no kicker here. Sorry. We're not upset or giddy about digesting dogs or cats. Just a bit blech-ed out. (We're not nearly as adventurous as Blake, clearly.) We do, however, enjoy rabbit, so... who knows what culinary delights the future holds. Oy. Pray for us.
Also, for what it's worth, please be a good human being by adopting a homeless cat or dog (or even a rabbit!) at the SF SPCA. Do it today. And, please, don't eat them.
