Some of us found this unnerving for various reasons. Some thought the barnyard “right there!” was unsanitary. The animals coming directly from the barn into the kitchen could trail disease or “something gross.” Others were unsettled to lock eyes with a huge mammal or adorable fowl for which they were hungering. They couldn’t bring themselves to order the T-bone now. But some did anyway, mostly at the urging of their tablemates and the convincing arguments thrown about by fellow patrons and the restaurant management itself.
“I can’t order the execution of that living animal.”
“You do it all the time when you order bacon or ribs.”
“But that animal’s already dead.”
“No, you just don’t see it. You must remember where your food comes from.”
“I know. It’s just hard.”
“You would rather a thousand anonymous animals packed into steel cages be slaughtered en masse, butchered and shipped thousands of miles in a freight hold?”
“No.”
“But you’re saying that’s easier.”
“It is.”
“You know nothing. Order your pork belly. Think about it. Connect with it. Don’t be a hypocrite. Don’t be ignorant.”
Our obsession was not entirely for the health benefits or in spite of the inconvenience, though, of course, these reasons were apparent and bandied about and debated (for the food was less sterile, the potential contact with disease was greater, the likelihood of waiting an extra 45 minutes for the preparation—which we did not complain about—was increased), but instead for the imbued spiritual connection with the act of eating, the regression in the progression. We had come too far in culinary arts and genetic modifications; it was for the communion with food, the return to the earthly things we had forgotten to recall.
The restaurant, undoubtedly predicting this unnerving sensation, had taken great pains to dazzle the patron once at her table. After viewing the barnyard through the long window, you wouldn’t believe such a room was adjacent to the one in which you ate. The copper-topped tables adorned with pressed, white linen napkins, rolled to contain spotless silverware that clanged and sparkled upon revelation, the gleaming white side dishes and solid square bottles of olive oil, the adorable ribbed ramekins containing pats of butter, with equally cute butter knives laid askew, the ambient music slipping from speakers hidden within brick walls or behind fish tanks, everything harmonizing, presentations of wine bottles, standing stainless steel ice buckets, holding champagne at sixty-degree angles, thin glass flutes ready for the most delicate of clinking, bowing servers clad in black, menus perfumed with lavender, and a dimming of the lights at the proper dining hour. Everything sophisticated, as one would expect of a place with $90 entrées. To further draw attention away from the rawness of the barn-room, Animal Farm served a perfect mis-en-scène on dishes. Green leaves in the left-hand corner of the white plate. Towering blackened meat, cut to impossibly straight right angles on all sides with orange sauce hypnotically swirled on top, but with the edge dotted for the sake of the composition. Edible flower petals of purple and white flanking each meal. We often commented that we didn’t want to ruin the artwork by consuming it. But ruin the artwork, we did. We left our forks and knives crossed in perfect X’s on our finished plates. We touched the corners of our mouths with linen and left the napkins crumpled next to our plates, an imperfect accent to highlight the perfection. Then, a clean table, and an ordering of espresso. Black liquid holes within porcelain. Delicate finger tips. Pinkies extended. Gracious. Our experiences began when we arrived early for a drink at the bar, after passing the long window into the barn-room. Civilized, we thought. And our experiences ended with a black leather-bound book. A white slip of slick and curling paper. A plastic sleeve. A passing. An autograph. We dined in the city. Then, arm in arm, we strolled out into the brisk night. We were conscious, connected, satisfied, and in need of nothing else but rest.
But there was yet a gap between our meals and the stock from which it was prepared, from which it was slaughtered and butchered. Slaughterhouse-Five, the newest of the “New Restaurants” was set up much the same way as Animal Farm, with one important difference: Whatever one ordered, one killed for his or her own meal. It was the first of the “kill-and-eat” chic restaurants. When one ordered a half roast chicken, one was escorted by a server, wearing a heavy apron and rubber boots, to the barn-room and there selected a chicken, a similar but invariably new experience to the old-hat ritual with the lobster. After selection, the chicken was moved into a special slaughter room, and the patron was handed a butcher knife. A staff member placed the chicken’s head between two nails on a long dark block, steadied the bird. The patron raised the blade and struck down, severing head from body. This brought on tears in some cases. To take a life in such a direct manner is an experience that shocks and sticks. Anyone who has boiled a lobster and spoken to the crustacean before dropping it into the bubbling bath knows that this act is not the same as swatting a mosquito. Inevitably, however, it is somehow more humane, because the departed is to be eaten, not simply flicked off a forearm onto the lawn. Those who ordered hamburgers pressed the button to send a bolt through the cranium of the cow they had chosen. Rabbits were struck repeatedly in the head with a short heavy rod until limp. This provided a dining experience like no other: the table conversation, and the true connection to the process of slaughtering the meal to be eaten. The chicken had never tasted so special. The burger never had more meaning.
“This is no longer a mystery. I have looked into the lamb’s eyes. I have chosen it. I have killed it consciously. And I am eating it. One does this all the time without knowing it, and now I am fully aware.”
Vegetarians, on the other hand, took a pleasant trip to the restaurant’s garden with a server to pluck leaves, tomatoes, cucumbers, grains, and mushrooms. It seemed the experience of “kill-and-eat” forced would-be carnivores into vegetarianism. Men and women came to terms with their previous willing ignorance, grew now completely sure that they could not kill to eat.
The contrast between hay-strewn barn-room and elegant dining area was next to go. Instead of a long window giving sight of the animals, patrons entered a vestibule that opened into the barn-room, through which they walked before entering a dining room that had seen all the frills removed. Gone were the gleaming plates and sparkling silverware, the too-white linen and champagne flutes and porcelain ramekins. Gone were the fish tanks and ambient music, the lights on dimmers, the two-tops and four-tops of copper plated tables. Gone were the servers in black, even the black aprons and black boots. Now the servers donned coveralls, wore kerchiefs in their hair, dried blood on their denim. The dining room at Pilgrim’s Progress was composed of long communal tables, warped and beaten wood tops, where one sat among strangers for a shared experience. Suddenly it seemed ridiculous to have previously separated oneself from the other diners by an arbitrary distance between tables. The once common rule of sitting with your party and ostensibly ignoring the fact that there were others eating near you had vanished. It was a thing of our past, a custom of other less tactful people at other less sophisticated restaurants to be upset at overhearing conversations at nearby tables. Now, we introduced ourselves to those around us. We all talked of the experience. And, indeed, the experience of eating the meal became more ceremonious when shared with strangers who became new friends. We offered bites of the turkey we had slain. They made up side plates of rabbit for us to try. We all had something to chat about, of course, so it wasn’t as awkward as we imagined it would be. We always discussed the changes in dining.
“It’s funny how you become so used to change. How quickly the past seems silly. How much more enjoyable eating is when you are more a part of the entire process. To see the animals, the gardens. To take the action to kill what will be your meal. I feel so foolish for never having even inquired as to where the ingredients came from before.”
“Well, I still don’t like it very much. I don’t eat meat,
and I hate that I still have to look at the poor animals who should be free.”
“But they are treated far better, and you can plainly see as much. God knows what was happening to them before.”
“I feel a great connection to the meals now. I don’t eat meat unless I am able to see it for myself first. This has made me a more educated, considerate, sensitive eater. You can’t deny that your wish for animals to not be eaten is, in part, aided by these establishments. Many people have refused and come face to face with their previous ignorance, you see.”
“But it’s still just a masking of the facts. We are still raising animals for livestock. We are still holding them captive. We are still denying them animal-lives.”
Perhaps someone had the same conversation in another “kill-and-eat” restaurant, or perhaps someone near this precise conversation at Pilgrim’s Progress was integral to the next step in dining. To further obliterate the hierarchy of man over beast and seeming brutality of holding animals hostage, as it were, WILD!, a new restaurant at the far edge of the city, near the great West Forest, boasted a menu that did not contain merely cage-free, free-range, organic, natural, and “kill-and-eat” steaks, lamb chops, and pork loin. This new restaurant promised that all meals would be entirely “free.”
The great West Forest is a peninsula, a sort of large and natural pen, jutting into the Moshpee Lake. Once patrons arrived through the vestibule, there was no long window and no barn-room to pass through before entering a rustic dining hall; there was a prep room.
We were outfitted with binoculars and canteens and duck whistles, and, most incredibly, weapons of our choosing. Cross-bow. Rifle. Bowie knife. Trap. Machete. The restaurant, however, maintained a strict black-tie dress code. Wild, yes, but civilized through and through.
A personal account is in order here, as I won’t soon forget my first trip out into the woods with my party. Our wives hesitated, so we told them that we fellas would go, check it out, have a guys’ night to try out the new restaurant. We arrived in our black tuxes and black bow ties, and just as promised, we were presented with our choice of weapons (we chose the net, the machete, the crossbow, and the rifle). In our formal wear with our paraphernalia, we sidled up to the bar for an aperitif. A few cocktails before the meal. We had arrived, as advised by WILD!, an hour before seating time, to hunt our meals. The cocktails were fantastic. We were all smiles, holding up our weapons and saying, “Can you believe this! It’s outstanding!” and posing for pictures. But then our server—acting as a guide, dressed in a white shirt with black tie, and apron, linen napkin draped over his forearm—tapped us on the shoulder and signaled that we should head out now. He took our glasses and carried them on a silver platter into the woods.
The three of us friends, to my knowledge, had never hunted, barely fished. The most “wild” we had been was in Pilgrim’s Progress and Slaughterhouse-Five, where we were allowed to simply kill the animals, while their breeding, feeding, raising, and holding were all executed by the restaurant staff, the farmhands, as they were. Now, we had no one handing us a bolt gun while the steer calmly knelt in a harness, no nails to hold the turkey’s head while we made one quick drop of the knife, no server tying up the rabbit for bashing. We were in nature. We weren’t in a shifty verisimilitude of farm life, which was how we now viewed those previous restaurants. We were in it—perhaps of it.
We sneaked along behind the server, who was all the while very serious, very rigid in his posture, carrying the platter of drinks, extending it out to us when we took breaks throughout the trek. He marched with his chin up, confident and calm. He did not speak. Instead, with his free arm, keeping the linen napkin draped just so, he flashed hand signals, which were surprisingly clear, though foreign to us. A splayed hand straight up—stop. A ticking pointer finger to the east—go. A lowered closed hand—crouch, wait. Two fingers that at first resembled a peace sign but then pointed—look, see, target.
I followed his horizontal peace sign through the trees out into a clearing. We were at the tree line before an expanse of green that ran up to a cliff, beyond which was the lake. I felt good. I saw this scene. It was beautiful to be in it, a part of it, really. So far removed from the hustle and bustle. It was genuine—that’s the word. I unfastened the top button of my dress shirt.
But then my eyes fell on what the server intended for me to find out there. A buck. It was chewing the grass of the small plain. Its mouth a mess of black gums and green mush. That rocking jaw. The chewing. The horns. Pale yellow horns like oak branches in winter reaching sharp points. The smooth, muscular brown sheen of coarse hair. Clouds letting go the sun. The deer twitching its ears to swat a fly. Big brown eyes. The animal was gorgeous in this free wilderness. In this wild. It was right.
The server, calm and confident, chin up, back to a tree, signaled for me to wait. I, in turn, signaled the target to the two in my party, who readied their weapons. I signaled to wait. Patience.
The deer turned away from the tree line and showed us its hind quarters. This is what the server was asking us to wait for. This opportunity to sneak up on the prey. He signaled for me to go—use the net.
My first thought was that I was going to get trampled. Impaled. I was going to botch this kill. I would spook the animal and it would charge me, mess of horns pointed at my heart. I wouldn’t be agile in my polished shoes. But I remembered my weapons, and perhaps if it did go badly, I could throw the net, trip it up, confuse it, distract it, while I escaped and the server assisted me to safety. My next thought: this is, after all, a business, a restaurant. It is not entirely real. It is all orchestrated to some degree, controlled. They will not let me die. If not for the humanity of it, for the lawsuit. I took a breath and raised myself up. I signaled for my party to follow in after me. Slow. Quiet. It would be my kill this time.
I crept through the trees and stepped into the light of the small plain. Ducks flew overhead, toward the lake. I spied a turkey by the tree line at my nine o’clock, but I wanted venison today. I focused on the deer, still facing out away from me to the cliff. It was twenty yards away at most.
Then the deer turned, and I instinctively rotated with it to keep myself hidden behind the beast. It stopped and put its head down for more leaves.
I charged.
It raised its head at my footfall. Then it sprang, darting away. I heaved the net, which flew fast and spread like a parachute, weighted at six points. The trap landed over the animal. It reared up, which entangled it further. Its hooves were now stuck through the mesh. Its horns were pinned down in the enclosing web. It was tying itself in a tighter and tighter ball of netting. The deer rocked up and down, spinning in circles. I watched, heart racing. I had actually done it. I had actually done it. This would be my kill.
In a final show of its incredible strength and will, the snared beast roared and bucked, airborne. The netting ripped at the horns. I thought, they won’t let me die. Then I remembered signing contracts in triplicate before cocktails. Waivers. Did I read them? The deer thrashed its beautiful head and horns on its strong neck. Its shoulders rippled and flexed. Its legs kicked like whips. The mesh tore, and the buck’s head came free.
I looked to the tree line, for the server, for my party. They remained crouched near the edge of the plain.
The server was signaling madly. He was waving the linen napkin. He was chopping with his arm, dropping the platter. Chopping and chopping.
I returned to the animal, which was now calm and facing me. It snorted. The mess of black gums and green mush now bloody. It lowered its head, pointed its horns, and charged. But the netting at its legs caught, and it collapsed in a thunderous heap not two feet from where I stood frozen.
I heard the server, doing away with signals, just hollering: “Slit its throat! Cut its throat! Now! Cut its throat!”
I reached to my side for the machete and withdrew the weapon from the sheath. A long, wide steel menace with weight. I raised it above the head of the snared buck and—when it swung its
head back, exposing its smooth brown-and-white tender neck—I brought down the blade.
Its head had jerked down quickly, and the machete met with its snout, chopping off a quarter of its black nose and a part of its top lip. Blood spurted. The animal made a sound like a gurgling bleat. I swung again and the blade stuck in its throat. I backed off, as it thrashed a moment more, then calmed and finally bled out.
After the server helped us quarter and cart away the meat, we slumped at our communal table under a great blue tent on the grass of the patio area, near men in tuxedos and women in shimmering dresses. Other patrons, in blood-splattered dress shirts, equally exhausted by the ritual, ordered liquor and beer in a few hushed syllables, awaiting their dinner as the sun set. There wasn’t much conversation. Some examined their weapons and smiled dimly when we met their eyes.
The venison arrived, and we grabbed at it with our hands, ripping the meat with our teeth. But we swallowed as quickly as we could. It was only hunger. We paid the bill and shouldered the bags of raw meat from our kill. We separated and somehow wandered home.
The OK End of Funny Town Page 7
