Restaurant Serves Millionth Strangled Duck
Am I the only one who finds this spectacle horribly grotesque, or am I just missing something was here?
PARIS (Reuters) - Select guests gathered at a top Paris restaurant on Tuesday to sample the one millionth duck to be snatched from grassy marshland, carefully strangled and ritually cooked with its own blood.
The legendary Tour d'Argent has been serving up eight-week old ducklings, reared in the west coast Challans marshes, since 1890, meticulously preparing them according to an age-old tradition, and serving each one with a souvenir numbered tag.
Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt ate duck No. 33,642 in 1910, Charlie Chaplin guzzled No. 253,652 some 45 years later, and celebrities like Elton John and Nicole Kidman and footballer Ronaldo have sampled more recent birds.
On Tuesday, the Tour d'Argent will uncork some of its finest wines and lay on fireworks above Notre Dame Cathedral, which diners will be able to see from the window as they tuck into the restaurant's one millionth roast "Caneton" (duckling).
"It's a real spectacle. That's what you go there for. When it's being prepared in front of the tables with Notre Dame in the background, it's like a miniature theater show," enthused restaurant critic Jean-Luc Petit-Renaud.
"One million ducks. It's marvelous, really moving," he told French TF1 television ahead of the feast, which has been reserved for a select 140 aficionados of fine food.
I suppose it would help to be French in order to appreciate this, but I cannot imagine willingly sitting through this sort of grotesque debauchery- miniature theater or no. Dress it up, give it some fancy haute cuisine French name, but however you camouflage it, this is still a disgusting spectacle.
