One Reason I Won't Keep Eating Meat When I Go Home

The USDA won’t let beef producers voluntarily screen their cattle for mad cow disease. How I wish I had worn my t-shirt today…

Berlin, the Land of White Meat

Before I left for Germany, a handful of people told me, “Berlin is a good place to go if you’re eating meat now.”  They were right. 

To be fair, Berlin is a good place to go for a lot of things. 

It’s a good place to go for laid-back bars and biergartens serving cheap, excellent beer.  My favorite was 25.  Its German name, fünf und zwanzig, is nearly impossible for native Anglophones to wrap their tongues around.  But after a couple of €3 Staropramens and a bit of time spent playing on one of the wooden swings hanging from the tall trees on the edge of the Spree River, the pronunciation problem won’t really matter anymore.

It’s a good place to go for thrift shops and markets with infinitely kitschy and weird merchandise.  Oderberger Strasse is packed with boutiques selling Soviet-era clothes, furnishings, and tchotchkes with more entertainment value than practical value.  For items you might actually want to buy, head to the flea market on Boxhagener Platz, whose piles of new and used household items, accoutrements, and works of art contain the occasional treasure.

It’s also a good place to go for culinary treats that have nothing to do with meat.  Whole-wheat waffles topped with caramelized walnuts and cherries at a cozy coffee shop called Kauf Dich Glücklich stand out in my mind, as does fondant-coated marzipan cake (one of dozens of varieties of pastries) at the cafe at the Opera House on the Unter den Linden.

But it’s true that the main culinary attraction for a temporary omnivore spending a weekend in Berlin is the meat, and I wanted to try a couple of German classics before I left. 

First on the agenda was schnitzel, which I ordered at a restaurant called Schwarzwald.  Alongside potatoes sautéed with chewy diced bacon and a salad of translucent cucumber ribbons, I received two sizable cutlets of thin, breaded pork.  The meat was juicy and white, with a uniform texture and an anodyne flavor.  The other omnivore at the table, an American who’d spent the past semester in Berlin, swapped me some of her flatbread for a taste of my entrée and proclaimed it good schnitzel.

My second taste of meat in Berlin was weisswürst, the Bavarian fresh white sausage that is traditionally poached in hot water and then peeled before eating.   I was lucky enough to try the sausage in the context of a homemade Bavarian feast prepared by a real, live, very friendly German person named Sören.   The spread included a salty cheese spread called obatzda, whole-grain bread with pumpkin seeds, and pretzels.  The sausages were moist and without much strong flavor of their own, but they tasted heavenly with a dollop of sweet mustard.  Their skins, once removed, resembled castoff pantyhose, which was understandably disquieting.  But the sausage meat itself was mild, tender, and inoffensive.

Based on my (admittedly limited) experiences, inoffensive seems like a good word to describe German meat in general.  Whether pounded and breaded or ground and stuffed into casings, German meat has been thoroughly disguised.  Its color—white—is a clear indication that the people making it are interested not in preserving the visceral, bloody quality of meat, but in showing their culinary prowess by forming a finished product that resembles a piece of flesh as little as possible.

I tend to think of camouflaged meat as a product of fast food and of the industrialized food system—think chicken nuggets and ground meat patties of all kinds.  I also tend to think of camouflaged meat as an unqualified bad thing, a sign that diners are ignoring the true source of their food.  But Berlin was a good reminder that the practice of hiding meat’s provenance behind acquiescent textures and bland flavors is not a purely modern-day phenomenon—and not a purely detrimental phenomenon, either.  Germans have been disguising meat for generations.  And you know what?  It tastes pretty good.

Unico

Argentineans don't shy away from gruesomeness at mealtime.

Exhibit A: The name for the grill commonly used in South American barbecue, parilla, is also the name of a torture device to which victims were strapped and electrocuted during the Argentinean dirty war.

Exhibit B: Unico’s interior decoration scheme.

Unico is the Argentinean steakhouse on rue Paul Bert where, last night, I had my first taste of beef in thirteen years. The brainchild of two Argentinean transplants, a photographer and an architect, the restaurant is located in a former butcher shop, and the owners left much of the original trimming intact. A poster listing the day’s market prices for different cuts of meat is the least of it – think meat hooks hanging from the ceiling and a massive mechanical slicer in plain view. Depending on your propensity for nausea, “grisly” might not necessarily seem like hyperbole.

But Unico's penchant for gruesomeness is matched by sweetness and conviviality. Its trilingual servers are friendly and attentive in a way that's fairly unheard of in France, and they ply you kindly (or not so kindly, depending on what time you have to get up the next morning) with complimentary shots of liqueur at the end of the meal. Unico’s ambiance, despite the spiked metal objects, is warm and genial. Dim lighting, clients of mixed ages, a feel-good 1980s soundtrack, and slightly above-average noise levels create an addictive atmosphere; my companions and I stayed for over three hours without realizing that the time had passed.

But the gruesome-pleasant dichotomy isn't the only contrariety that Unico bridges with aplomb. My evening at Unico was a night of counterintuitive combinations, of contradictions resolved.

Can a blood sausage be both savory and sweet? An appetizer whimsically named mariage de saucisses argentines et boudin noir proved that the flavor of blood is complex, at once deep and mellow and luscious. (It's a better choice of starter than the ceviche, whose melting texture was offset by a bitter taste that made the whole operation feel like sashimi doused in limeade.)

Can a taste be both novel and familiar? My bife de lomo, tall and resting upon two spears of asparagus, was different from any of the other meat I’ve tried (and not just because Unico’s version of à point is so pink that I’d hate to see their saignant). The steak’s flavor was soothingly ferric, its texture resilient. The robust mouthfuls of protein were foreign, but every bite strongly reminded me of my early childhood, of evenings spent swimming in the chlorinated pool at my aunt and uncle’s house and then eating grilled steak with my cousins. Last night I unconsciously began grasping my fork babyishly in my fist, plunging my meat enthusiastically in the accompanying chimichurri sauce and aioli, so pleased was I by the unexpected familiarity of the meat.

Can a meal embody both animalism and humanity?

I had always thought of steakhouses as places for men who wanted to get in touch with their inner caveman, to devour flesh with the unabashed relish of a predatory mammal. Immoderate consumption of meat, in any context, feels like a gesture of defiance of modern civilization, its neatness, its rules, its exigencies of balance and control.

But last night I saw that the act of sharing meat, too, is a celebration of humankind and of the connection that people have with one another. Maybe I had half a glass too much of the Luigi Bosca I shared with my companions, but I understood for the first time the dignified symbolism of meat: Taking the life of an animal is an affirmation that we are alive. It is an affirmation that we humans are special, complicated, not like other animals.

Not every aspect of my meal at Unico was contradictory – the warm, oozing dulce de leche cake with a liquid center that we shared for dessert was an unadulterated pleasure. But the pleasure of the rest of the evening was complex, and I left feeling, somehow, both light and heavy.

Salmon Woe

I so enjoyed my sushi on Friday that I ordered even more last night, this time from Matsuri.  The phase of squeamishness about fish had passed; qualms about eating animals didn't even enter my mind.  I just enjoyed the surprisingly tender texture and mild taste of raw salmon and the smug knowledge that it was providing me with a good deal of protein and omega-3s.  I felt great.

And then all my good energy was quashed this morning when I got to work and looked at nytimes.com:  Taras Grescoe, the author of the cheerfully titled Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, had written an op-ed listing all the reasons for which it is evil to eat salmon.  There are a quite a few:  the approaching extinction of wild Pacific salmon after decades of overfishing; salmon's high price; overcrowding, disease, and parasites on salmon feedlots; unregulated nerve-deteriorating pesticides in supermarket fish...you know, complete and utter unsustainability.

Eating animals seems more and more to be a losing game.  Either the moral weight of killing an animal seems too heavy to justify the benefits of animal protein, or, in the cases in which it seems difficult to muster much moral concern for the welfare of an animal—the case of salmon, for instance—the environmental consequences are inexcusable.

Vegetarian food is by no means wholly without bad consequences, but it seems (except in a strictly literal sense) less thorny than meat.  Sure, there are pesticides and migrant workers and GMOs and greenhouse gas emissions to worry about when it comes to plants.  But somehow these problems seem dwarfed by the aggregate evils of eating animals, and somehow they seem more easily avoided by conscientious shopping, too.

Grescoe, perhaps to avoid being seen solely as a bearer of bad news, suggests putting slightly more sustainable sardines on one's bagels instead of salmon.  It's a kind offer, but I think the next time I'm at Absolute Bagels on Broadway, I'll stick with cream cheese.  Maybe even Tofutti.

About the T-Shirt I'm Wearing in My Profile Picture

It says “FUSDA.”  It’s meant to be a statement of admonishment for the United States Department of Agriculture.

I don’t claim to be a farm policy expert, but it doesn’t take an expert to see that the U.S. government has committed quite a few agriculture-related transgressions in its day, from failing ever to tell its obese citizenry to eat less to diluting labeling standards to unloading unhealthy and even dangerous foods on public school cafeterias.  Suffice it to say that an organization can’t really promote agricultural interests and protect the health of Americans at the same time, and suffice it to say that the USDA errs almost without exception on the side of bowing to agribusiness lobbyists.

Is my t-shirt a glib, crude way of condensing these issues?  Admittedly.  Is it funny?  Maybe, maybe not.  But I thought it would appeal to the ever-growing crowd of people who read Michael Pollan  and seek out sustainable food.  In fact, I thought that the “FUSDA” idea was an uncommon stroke of brilliance on my part, and I looked forward to getting appreciative nods and occasional scowls when I wore it in public.  I thought it was a bold, instantly recognizable statement that would provoke discussion wherever I went.  I was a little nervous the first time I put it on, actually, unsure of how strongly people would react to my declaration of defiance.

Unfortunately, no one has ever understood the t-shirt.  Responses have ranged from a polite “What does it mean?” to a puzzled “What is foozdah?”  Even my hippie-est friends haven’t gotten the message.  When people on the street see it, they look briefly bored and confused before glancing at the next person.  So much for my bold statement on agriculture policy. 

If you, too, would like to wear “FUSDA” across your chest, I recommend doing what I did and using your own design on spreadshirt.com.  (You get extra points for irony if you have it printed on a certified organic t-shirt.)   You probably shouldn’t try to sell them, though; I have a feeling that the government might have a legitimate claim in copyright court if anyone tried making a profit off of them.  If the government could figure out what “FUSDA” is supposed to mean, that is.

Sushishop

Even fast-paced offices encounter the occasional slow period, and employees unexpectedly faced with little to do are prone to daydreaming about lunch.

Today, during a stretch of hours during which we did nothing but make coffee and friend each other on Facebook, my colleagues and I decided to change up our midday meal by ordering in from Sushishop.  Samar, who sits at the desk catty-cornered to mine, claims that theirs is the best sushi in the city.  “I ordered from there once, and I was still thinking about it three days later,” she said.

Sushishop, of which there are twelve branches in and around Paris (and which is in the process of expanding to Bordeaux, Marseille, Montpelier, Reims and Luxembourg), has a gorgeous website whose near-pornographic close-ups of lustrous slices of salmon daubed with cream cheese were enough to occupy bored underlings for a good half an hour.

Unfortunately, the site’s sleekness doesn’t extend to its online ordering feature, which flat-out refuses to work.  Picking up the phone is the better option (calls cost 15 centimes per minute, but if you’re calling from your office line, it’s on the company tab).  Service is decent:  Less than forty minutes after the phone was returned to its cradle this afternoon, a helmeted delivery man buzzed up to our office on rue Scribe and good-naturedly accepted the many euro coins of our combined contributions.

Though Sushishop’s menu includes such novelties as Tuscan spring rolls (crab, pine nuts, mesclun, and truffle mayonnaise) and sushi topped with porgy tartare, diced mango, and vanilla-scented oil, we opted for the lunch formule—eighteen pieces of maki, in various combinations, served with a salad and soup, for 12.50€.  It sounded like a deal, but the salad that arrived was a disheartening mix of white cabbage and flavorless vinegar, and no trace of miso’s complex flavor had survived in the insipid soup.

The sushi, however, had what it took to brighten our afternoon.  The salmon at the core of a roll of sticky maki dissolved slowly and gratifyingly on the tongue.  A crab-avocado California roll, coated with cheerfully orange masago roe, boasted a sturdy texture and saline tang. And, though they weren’t technically sushi, avocado-cream cheese spring rolls wrapped in translucent green rice paper had the same dense, rich mouth feel as their seaweed-wrapped cousins.

My coworkers and I were rescued from our ennui after lunch by a sudden influx of emails to be answered and tasks to be completed.  But, even if we don’t hit another slow patch on Monday, we might still be thinking about Sushishop three days from now.

Are Locavores Sadists?

Chicken farmer and San Francisco Bay Guardian columnist L.E. Leone has written a truly excellent piece for Slate about the reality of killing chickens titled “There Will Be Chicken Blood.”  (Why can’t I have a crew of witty copy editors writing my post titles?  I’d be much better off.  Let me know if you’re interested in the job.)

Leone examines a pseudo-trend that has tagged along with locavores’ worship of Michael Pollan:  “hip, young, smart, liberal-arts-college graduates” raising and butchering their own chickens.  She also describes, with elegance and humor, her own experience caring for and then beheading her chickens:

When I do what I do with a hatchet and a chicken, I feel like crap, and I feel like God. I feel alive and in love and closer than ever to death. So I guess that is, for me, mixed feelings, yes. And the mix itself is welcome and intensely gratifying. In fact, it's almost too much. Too swirly, too soupy. I can tell you that the part of this swirl which seems "good," as opposed to "evil," has absolutely nothing to do with foiling the chicken industry or saving the environment or taking personal responsibility for my role in the food chain. It has to do with getting a little bit bloody and gross, like the complicated, hungry animal that I am.

And this is where, despite the beautiful writing, Leone loses me.  I simply cannot imagine feeling gratification from killing an animal.

After I wrote about foie gras, I emailed back and forth a bit with a journalist I know who’d spent time on a foie gras farm in the south of France.  He told me that the farmers there treated their geese with great care and almost loved them—but that they force-fed, slaughtered and ate the birds without reservations.  I had the same reaction then as I do now to Leone:  Isn’t that just a little sadistic?

Hypothetically, I have great admiration for farmers who kill their own animals for meat.  It goes without saying that chickens like Leone’s, who are serenaded by their owner every evening, are far better off than the birds in battery cages from which Americans obtain most of our chicken meat and eggs.   And it goes without saying that it takes great fortitude to face the unpleasant underbelly of meat—the fact that it necessitates the death of an animal—in a day and age when a person can eat hundreds of hamburgers without ever having seen a cow in real life.   In theory, I think more omnivores should be killing chickens and cows and pigs.

But feeling pleasure, power, from slaughtering an animal?  I imagine that the feeling that Leone describes so deftly, which seems to be on a par with Pollan’s feelings after killing a boar in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is a psychological necessity:  the ego’s way of processing the magnitude of causing the death of another being. 

But it’s not a feeling I want to feel, which is why I think I’ll be perfectly happy returning to vegetarianism once this trial period of omnivorousness is over. If I have an inner sadist, I’d rather not know about her.