Seal, hunted as food for generations in Canada’s Gulf of St Lawrence, is now drawing rave reviews from big-city chefs keen to serve it up with apples, as a pate, or even with cocoa sauce.
Fat-free and rich in iron and omega-3, seal is widely seen as a big nutritional winner.
For time immemorial seal has been eaten — raw — as a traditional food by indigenous people such as the Inuit.
PHOTO: AFP
It also has been a traditional food for generations of hunters in Canada’s east who serve it up roasted, or sometimes with a hearty Burgundy sauce.
Now, rustic seal has been carted out by back-to-basics foodies dressed up as a gourmet delight, particularly inspiring diners in mostly French-speaking Quebec Province, where there is a devoted food-lovers’ culture.
Many diners are huge fans of its taste, describing the mammal’s meat as somewhere between duck and veal.
“The texture and body of it really are unique,” said Benoit Lengnet, the French chef at Montreal’s Au Cinquieme Peche restaurant. Seal arrived on its menu two and a half years ago.
But with a super-short hunting season, from late last month to late this month, seal is a seasonal specialty that is served, rather frenetically, for just a few weeks a year.
And it comes laced with a dose of controversy as the annual seal hunt is roundly condemned by environmental groups, both in Canada and abroad. The European Parliament is due to vote in the coming weeks on a total ban favored by most EU states on importing seal-related products.
The main Canadian hunt started on April 15 off the northeast coast of Newfoundland, with an estimated total seasonal kill of 338,000 animals.
“It has been a week since we have had it [this season] and it has been half the main courses ordered,” said Lengnet, who was preparing a seal dish with truffle oil.
Luc Jomphe, head chef and owner of the Bistro du Bout du Monde restaurant, said seal “is a sort of unusual niche market product” that has really caught on.
A trailblazer in seal gastronomy, Jomphe helped start it all when he opened a restaurant five years ago on the Iles-de-la-Madeleine, in the middle of the Gulf of St Lawrence where the annual hunt kicks off.
The success still seems to be growing, Jomphe said at a tasting in Montreal.
One of his specialties is a seal “magret,” served a bit like duck magret, or duck breast, and accompanied by a cocoa-based sauce and legumes.
“It is surprising, but really good. The meat is light and does not taste like fish at all,” said a diner named Maude, acknowledging it was her first time, seal-wise.
Still, the trend has not yet become mainstream, as restaurants serving seal remain on the rather bold side.
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