The French Ortolan Bird: Drowned in Liquor and Eaten Whole

I was listening to my friend Ryan Callahan's podcast today. It's a Cows Weekend Review. And he was talking about this animal, this bird, rather, that people eat and they drown this bird in brandy. They take this tiny bird, each one of them is just a few ounces, and they drown them in brandy. And then when you eat them, you eat them whole. You eat everything. The guts, you eat the tissue, the skin, that's where it is. What is the name of it? How do I pronounce it? Bordellon Bunting. Bordellon. And so when you eat it, you put a napkin over your head, traditionally, when they eat it. And as they eat it, Bourdain was the first one to tell me about this shit. Oh no, it was Duncan. Duncan Trussell was the first person to tell me about this shit. And the first one, Bourdain loved it. They soak the bird in brandy. They drown it. They drown it in brandy and then they cook it somehow or another. But anyway, go back to that picture where those guys were eating it, where you could go back to the picture with the... See how they have those things over their head? They put these napkins over their head to take in the aromas and to trap the aromas, and they also do it to hide their face from God. That was the idea. What kind of people are these? I think it's Europeans. I think it's something that in France, it's popular. It's a popular dish. And it's endangered. Not endangered now, but they're... Yeah, it's okay. Bordellons. Could France's cruelest food be back in the menu? As French chefs lobby for Bordellon to be reintroduced onto menus, we explain why cooking the rare and delicate songbird is so controversial. So that's even grosser, right? It's a songbird. Like how they named it a songbird. It's not a little tiny dinosaur. No, no, no, it's a songbird. It just wants to sing for you. Make the woods brighter. Tweet, tweet, tweet. No, man, it's a weird little tiny animal. It says, why is it illegal to cook and kill an Ordellon? The RSPB lists their status as vulnerable. And throughout the 1970s and 1980s, numbers in France declined dramatically as poachers caught vast numbers to supply. Restaurants where the bird has long been considered rare and expensive delicacy. Some restaurants would charge over 50 pounds for the dish. What is that in... Is that euros or pounds? Pounds, that's a pound, yeah. What do you think that costs? What's 50 pounds? Is that like 100 bucks? Not quite, but it's a lot. Something like that. France's League for the Protection of Birds claimed Ordellon numbers plunged 30% between 1997 and 2007, as many as 1,500 poachers catching an estimated 30,000 live birds a year. So they're just decimating these fucking things. The method of capturing and killing them is what's fucked up about it. So the hunters catch the birds using traps in the fields. They're kept in cages, encouraging them to gorge on grain in order to double their size. And it said the Roman emperors stabbed out their eyes in order to make the birds think it was night, making them eat even more. Okay, here it goes. And then how were they killed? This is where the squeamish look away. What is the name of this website? So we give people telegraph? It's an autograph. Autograph from a telegraph. What is the name of the article? Well, we'll say it at the end. How were they killed? It says, this is where the squeamish need to look away. Traditionally in France, the fat and little birds are drowned in a vat of armagnac. I guess that's like a cognac or something. What is that, armagnac? Yeah, you're probably dead on with that. Okay. Managing to snuff out their lives and marinate them at the same time, killing two birds with one glug, as it were, it says here in the article. French chefs argue that it's not a bad way to die. It quotes, what the fuck? But I suppose it might be less cruel than throwing a live lobster into a pot of boiling water. Anyway, so that's how they drown them and then they cook them and then you eat the whole fucking thing.