Bird flu forces French restaurants to change menus (with fewer foie gras)

The poultry crisis means that fine restaurants in France have to remove foie gras from the menu or only serve small portions. The owner and chef of Le 1862 Restaurant said this weekend CNN†

The Michelin-starred restaurant in southwest France no longer receives regular deliveries, and is therefore turning to local producers. In the meantime, the chef is working on alternative dishes to replenish goose and duck livers. “2022 will be the year with more vegetable dishes and less meat,” he told CNN.

old dish

French-Dutch chief chef Alain Caron also hears from his fellow Frenchmen that foie gras is hardly available. “A famous butcher from Paris recently told me it’s a tragedy: It’s almost impossible to find. And people who order or buy foie gras, they do much less. They are afraid, because of bird flu.”

According to Caron, the fact that the delicacy is still popular in France, despite the controversial method of production, is partly due to the fact that the dish is centuries old. “Farmers in southwest France used to make foie gras to make some extra money. They fed the geese extra food. It wasn’t a good method of course, but it wasn’t done mechanically as it is now. The quality of the geese was very good.”