The Pol Pot of Lobsterdom

Michael Ruhlman, a food writer I admire, launched an eloquent volley questioning the extremes of animal-rights activism on the food blog Megnut. He writes:

What is going on here? Lobsters are insects! . . . The real victims are the agribusiness chickens, cows and hogs, but the animal rights activists can't touch the culprits responsible, true goliaths. So instead The People try to save the little animals.

Ruhlman called on celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain to use his influence to combat these absurdities.

The author of Kitchen
Confidential has a few
words for Whole Foods.

Ruhlman's rant generated a lot of discussion. Bourdain himself even weighed in. Bourdain wrote:

The fucktards at Whole Foods . . . have done us a real service by providing the most ludicrous example of "animal welfare" concerns with their public hand wringing over the fate of shellfish. Comedy Gold. . . . Extraordinary that in a time when hundreds of thousands of PEOPLE are starving to death in the Sudan and elsewhere, that there is no more burning issue on the minds of educated, well-fed, financially comfortable citizens than whether or not a clam [or lobster] feels pain. PETA . . . will of course do nothing that impacts America's bottomless hunger for fried, battery raised chickens -- and will continue to concentrate on "winnable" battles . . .

. . . like lobster.

As always, it was entertaining to hear from Bourdain, who has no compunction about killing or eating just about anything.

Especially lobsters. A few years ago, Bourdain published a short story -- no doubt based on his real-life experiences -- that began with a priceless meditation on lobster killing.

The story was called "Chef's Night Out," and it begins with the narrator in a foul mood:

I've gotten a little fragile since the lobsters started looking at me funny. . . . Understand; I've been killing lobsters for like, 22 years now. I've boiled them alive. Steamed them to death. I've torn them in half, chopped them into wriggling chunks for fricassee, for Lobster Americaine. Early in my career, when I worked at one of those seaside tourist traps, you could pick your victim out of a 55-gallon tank on your way in and I'd kill him to order, have him delivered to your table steamed, broiled, stuffed, or baked -- your choice.

I killed them in dozens, stacked their struggling bodies in heaps, five-deep in the heavy stainless steel and wrought-iron steamer, slammed the double doors shut, turned the wheel, and gave them the steam. I racked up, in one year, a body count that would have been the envy of a company-sized unit of angry Serbs. I was the Pol Pot of Lobsterdom, and you could smell the brackish cloud from the stacks of the dead blocks away from my kitchen. The drains clogged with the milky white albumen which bubbled out from inside their shells -- it clung to my shoes, stained my clothes, collected under my fingernails.

And I didn't mind at all. Not one little bit.

One of my early chefs, an affable Frenchman with a drinking problem, explained why one must section the hapless creatures while still alive for Lobster Americaine. "The meat," he said, "she become tough."

I said, "Oui, chef!" with no thought of my victims' pain, or of some Lobster Nuremberg in the future.

Other chefs I knew complained of bad dreams.

"I dream I'm in a sauna," said one, "and I look out the door through the little window? And there's a big motherfuckin' lobster and he's, like, turning up the heat, man. His antennae are twitching, and he's making all sortsa godawful screechin' sounds. There's a whole buncha his friends, they clappin' their claws together as he gives me the steam. Then, when I'm all pink and red and shit, they take me out and split me up the middle and cram hunksa crabmeat and bay scallops in my chest, and I'm flopping around and screaming on the cutting board. Payback . . ." shuddered my friend, "payback is a motherfucker." . . .