A controversial food movement from the US that has turned eating live animals, eyeballs and partially formed bird embryos into an Internet phenomenon is set to spread to Britain.
Machismo eating gained notoriety after diners posted clips on the Internet of themselves eating foods aimed to shock. A New York club called Gastronauts (gastronauts.com) is planning an offshoot in London.
Machismo eating involves sampling ethnically diverse foods including live creatures and dishes such as lambs’ brains, sheep’s eyeballs and balut from Southeast Asia, a poached duck egg containing a partially-formed embryo.
The movement has established itself as an Internet phenomenon and has spawned a “food paparazzi” who photograph or video diners swallowing squirming octopus tentacles, a Korean delicacy, in New York restaurants. But Peta UK, which campaigns for the ethical treatment of animals, on Saturday warned it would intervene to prevent machismo eating from taking off in London.
In the US, the consumption of live lobster and octopus has already proved problematic. Peta US lawyer Jeffrey Kerr alerted district attorneys in a bid to stop two New York restaurants from serving live octopuses.
“Because octopuses feel pain, the restaurants’ practices clearly violate the state’s anti-cruelty statute, which prohibits anyone from torturing or unjustifiably maiming, injuring or mutilating any animal,” Kerr said.
Mark Bittman, food columnist at the New York Times, believes London is an obvious destination for the movement.
“It has a wide ethnic diversity, so it’s only a matter of time before this trend, for want of a better word, takes off,” he said.
Eating extraordinary foods for fun was turned into a movement when Curtiss Calleo started Gastronauts with a friend, Ben Pawker, five years ago. Calleo and Pawker pick a restaurant and design a menu around unusual delicacies. In some cases, this may even mean taking food to the restaurant.
Before visiting the Nepali restaurant Himalayan Yak in Jackson Heights, New York, and disappointed by the creature’s absence from the menu, Calleo ordered 18kg of fresh yak meat from a supplier in Florida which was then cooked to their taste at the restaurant.
“The focus is on the thrill of eating something unusual, trying out new restaurants and getting a good cross-section of both cuisine and company,” he said.
British chef Jeremy Lee, who presented the TV series Could You Eat An Elephant? with Fergus Henderson, thinks this style of eating reflects “a stag night mentality,” adding: “To reduce ethnic cuisine to some sort of challenge is frankly insulting to that culture.”
The Observer newspaper’s restaurant critic, Jay Rayner, said: “There’s investigating ethnic cuisine, and then there’s macho eating and downright tacky eating and food tourism, and they’re not far apart.”
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