On Boars, Booze, and Barbarism
Observations on an autumn hunt in France
The day before the wild boar hunt, we’d eaten horse meat, which was the traditional weekend lunch of chef Olivier Desaintmartin’s childhood. Olivier had earlier taken me along to visit the village horse butcher, who complained that the younger generation of French didn’t eat so much cheval anymore. The butcher blamed it on inferior supermarket horse meat, which he said came — like everything else — pre-packaged from America. “There’s also this idea that the horse is the friend of the man,” said the horse butcher, who also happened to be an old friend of Olivier’s.
That night, in Charleville-Mézières, near the Ardennes Forest, we drank champagne with Olivier’s uncle Jean, who proudly showed off a local hunting magazine that had published his snapshot of a huge, bloody, dead boar he’d recently killed. “That’s what you’ll be flushing out of the bushes tomorrow,” Olivier said to me with a laugh.
Olivier’s front window, on which he wrote ‘Foie Gras!’ in precious Frenchy hand lettering, was often smashed by vandals.
Olivier is a French chef who’s lived and worked in Philadelphia for decades. At his restaurants, Olivier has always insisted on bistro staples like organ meats…
