Despite the fact that it is but one of a handful of Hill restaurants that serve the dish, 12th Ave’s Lark is the target of an ongoing animal rights protest against foie gras. The Northwest Animal Rights Network has pledged to picket Lark every Friday night until fatty goose liver has been removed from its fancy pants menu. This has been going on for weeks but things have were stirred up considerably this weekend by a series of Slog posts about the protests. The Slog’s position: NARN should focus on larger abuses in the agribusiness industry and that the geese, relative to other animals like factory processed pigs and cows, aren’t suffering to produce the expensive delicacy. The comments, predictably, are a mix of seemingly robot-produced comment SPAM in support of NARN with a good representation of the ‘boy are Seatte liberals stupid’ crowd mixed in.
Lark is reportedly digging in and holding its foie gras ground — and, Slog says, foie gras sales on Friday nights are actually up. Olivar’s Philippe Thomelin must be thinking some guys have all the luck. Which can only mean one thing is coming next: a Capitol Hill foie gras crawl in support of the right to serve goose liver.
A small correction: Lark is serving duck foie gras. I hope your fact checking is better in your other information… Or should we just assume you’re wrong elsewhere too?
i’m wrong a lot. i try to not to be. thanks for the help.
Chicago made news when they banned Foie Gras, but then back peddled about a year later. Turns out, people like it!
Lark is now on my short list of dinners spots for the weekend.
Sounds like I need to go to Lark for dinner this weekend.
It’s troubling to read people comment (mostly elsewhere) on how AWESOME it is to eat the livers of cruelly force fed birds. Foie gras seems like one of those things that could easily be eliminated from restaurants and not be missed. Our neighborhood strives in many ways to promote a sustainable way of life, so I completely support the protest.
Let me, the educated customer, decide what I want to eat. Don’t ban a foodstuff just because you don’t like the way it’s produced. Exercise your own right to choose not to eat foie gras.
can you support Lark and not support shoving pipes down birds throats so they have to swallow everything you feed them just so some foodie can have their fatty liver? Do we really have to be that self absorbed? Flame me…….now!
How cruel does it have to be before you ban it? No limit?
People are free to protest, people are free to eat. Some pate-eating people are kinda mad that they’re asked to think through the consequences of their eating, and some protesting people are kinda mad that some pate-eaters have thought it through and still want to eat it anyway.
Personally, I’d guess that the protesting has some effect on society, but it seems like it would be fairer to move the protest around a bit and I think it would be more productive overall to focus on legislating, not protesting. There must be plenty of groups working to enact standards on the humane treatment of animals raised for food…?
Why should we have a choice to do something that causes suffering? It seems to me that our rights are limited when they impinge on someone else. This is especially the case when it is a delicacy that is not necessary. Suffering that is entirely unnecessary is absolutely wrong. Seems pretty simple to me. Who in the world has the right to cause completely pointless and unnecessary suffering?
What I see in these comments is the extent of ignorance the human race has allowed itself to de-volve to. People who eat food from tortured and abused animals have fallen below the level of deserving any rights at all. When your time comes to leave this earth you will be surprised where you end up, laugh now because everyone pays for every action they engaged in here tenfold. You will experience all that you have inflicted upon other beings be them animals or humans…….
Don’t threaten people who disagree with you, Amber.
All of this talk about Foie Gras is really making me crave some…
I’ve spoken to many pro foie gras folks and the conversation inevitably turns personal and nasty very quickly. I think the foodies know that if they focused their argument on the actual issue of foie gras, they they will lose. So resorting to personal bashing and name calling is the only way to win an argument for foie gras. Even the most unconcerned foodie knows that there is no way to come out looking good when you defend shoving a metal pipe down the throats of ducks and making them sick for a delicacy.
A foie gras crawl sounds like a great idea!
who in the world can cause unnecessary suffering? ha, try president bush.
i’m researching for a persuasive paper on foie gras and from what i’ve seen, the foie gras that produces the best taste are from animals that were NOT harmed. These animals are NOT fed until they are sick. They are NOT stressed. True, the force feeding process seemed unhumane, but they are NOT humans. The tube that gets placed down their throats does not hurt them, neither are they choking, or feeling any discomfort in any way. Please, just take a trip to a legit foie gras farm folks, discover the truth.
what if its not cruel to shove tubes down their throats?
have you considered that perhaps the liver of an aggravated goose or duck would be tough and not yeild very good foie gras plate?
i disagree. there is name calling and immaturity on all sides. there is a sensible truth and it is somewhere in the middle.