Eating Local

Published: May 26, 2010
Eating Local
There is a current movement of folks calling themselves Locavores. They’re free to eat whatever they want, as long as it travels no more than 160 kilometers to get to their plate.
Their plan is based not only on supporting local farmers and growers, but also under the premise that each K of travel the food has to undertake to get to your mouth, it’s a K of shipping; which means a K of burning fossil fuels etcetera etcetera.
It seems fair enough, but the more I thought about it, it seemed almost impossible.
For example, a steak from central New South Wales, might be traveling a few hundred kilometers to get to Sydney. However, that doesn’t take into account the Chinese glad wrap used to keep the meat fresh, or the plastic trays and blood absorbers that package and display the meat, or how far the grain had to travel to get to the cows.
A recent study in Melbourne showed that the average, Melbourne shopping basket contains approximately 70,803 kilometres of food travel. Now I doubt that I’ve even traveled that far in the last five years.
So, this seems like a genius plan, I can support Sydney and save the planet, merely be eating local gear. I’m going to quit buying imported junk from the West and the North and only eat Sydney produce. Sydney beef, Sydney lamb, Sydney bacon… What? We don’t have any farms?
At first, our lack of provincial providers brought on a depressing panic. However, this was quelled when I actually took out a map and realised that 160k was a long fucking way. So I can be a locavore I can eat Lithgow kangaroo, oysters from down South, beef and bananas from up North – and sip on the Southern Highland’s finest wines to wash it all down!
However, this got me pondering – what is our produce? What can Sydney offer the culinary  world? We make some great beers in town, check out some favourites; The Lord Nelson from the Rocks, 4 Pines Beer from Manly, or anything from the Squire Brewhouse in Darling Harbour.
We’ve got some great fish around our beaches as well as some delicious crustaceans… but what about real meat? What have we got in this ever-sprawling city of ours that can satisfy a meat-eater’s hunger while still remaining as local as all hell.
I pondered this on the walk home from work the other day and realised – we got game.

That’s the rub kids – game! We’ve got all sorts of wild game floating around greater Sydney. Our parks are filled with rabbits, our streets are filled rats and pigeons; and our national parks are littered with delicious native species (the Royal National Park even has deer).

HOWEVER… the legalities of killing native species are a little touch-and-go, and killing deer requires both ownership of a gun AND travel past Cronulla. So, that leaves us with  Rats and Pigeons and Beer as our local produce.

Now, I did some research into catching and cooking rats, I even tried to write up a story about it… but the long and short of it is, there’s no fucking point. From everything I read, rats taste like shit and when you live in a city with free food for the homeless and ALDI stores for everyone else – there’s no real need to fend for yourself.

Still… I felt I had to sample some local produce.

So, with the knowledge that rats don’t taste too good, we did some research and found a marvelous little joint down by market city called The Emperor’s Garden.

It’s a shonky little restaurant, with all kinds of dead, dried-out animal carcasses hanging in the front window. The kind of place where everyone speaks fine enough English, as long as you stick to the menu and don’t ask about cooking preparations (or where they get their pigeons).

We went down with the SINK credit card and ordered two, deep-fried offerings of Sydney’s fattest rats with wings. It took a while (approximately 9 Chinese beer’s worth), but when they arrived, we saw 2, full pigeons; which had been cleaved into five pieces each and when reassembled looked like little, meaty jigsaws.

Not missing a beat, we pounced on the poultry, teething the flesh from the bone like a dog chewing the fleas off a mate. It was delicious, more like duck than chicken, with a texture not too dissimilar from pork. I will note, however, that it was an awful lot of hard work to get the flesh off the bone, because even though pigeons seem like fat fuckers, I can only assume after eating them that most of that bulk is actually feather and filth.

At the end of the meal (about 4.6 minutes later), we were left with a pyramid of tiny bones, and two, deep-fried pigeon heads. Now, I’m not sure if these are meant for eating, but when three men eat at a table together, the tendency is to eat before thinking – lest you miss out and go hungry in a quick flash.

My slow reaction time and booze pickled mind meant that I missed out, while Tom and Cookie plunged their gnashing teeth into some deep-fried, seasoned, pigeon skull. And while not a queazy man on most days, I can safely say that watching two friends hack their way into some bird head, leaving carbon and ash on their teeth and lips, was a hard thing to face at such an hour on such a night.

So there you have it… Sydney’s local poultry, tasted and rated as deliciously worth the $18 we paid for it. With that said though, now that we’ve developed a taste, we’ll need to find out the legality of hunting pigeon in Martin Place.

Does anyone have a lawyer or old .22 in their family?