‘WILD GAME’ IS REALLY RATHER TAME

Winter is wild-game season, right? You know: Things like, oh, say, rabbit, pheasant, boar, venison--uncommon, exotic creatures whose presence on your plate is practically guaranteed to inspire a sense of daring, of high adventure.

The only trouble is, if you live in California and have not dined extensively in other lands, the chances are pretty good that you have never eaten true wild game--unless, of course, you’ve shot it and cooked it up yourself. Shot is the key word here: Certain animals are known as game in English (and usually some variation on the word for chase or hunt in other languages) because they are taken for sport. They are truly wild animals, that is, who at least theoretically develop a richness from their forage diets (and strenuous exercise) that farm-bred animals simply do not have, and that are slain on the hoof rather than being methodically slaughtered like commercial chickens or beef cattle. It’s not the animal itself, that is, but the conditions under which it lived and died that makes it wild game. Turkeys shot over East Coast waterways qualify; venison raised in a pen does not.

In much of the world (and even some of the United States), amateur hunters are allowed to sell certain kinds of wild birds and animals that they’ve shot. In our own state, among others, though--for a variety of health and conservation reasons--this practice is strictly illegal. Some frozen wild game indeed ends up in the local marketplace (the remarkable game and poultry wholesaler Night Bird in San Francisco regularly comes up with things like six-to-eight-pound skinned and dressed raccoons or Asian Nilgai antelope sausage, but most chefs prefer fresh stuff that isn’t really game. Thus, when you’re offered such delights as venison, boar, pheasant, partridge or whatever in a top-notch eating place today, chances are that it will never have seen the inside of a freezer--and, incidentally, that it will be quite good--but that it will not be wild game, but farm-raised. Nor will it taste like wild game--which is the real problem. Let someone coin another name for these items: Since they are neither wild nor the trophies of the (hunting) game, it is false advertising to claim that they are.

WORDS OF MOUTH: One of the gnawing little problems that faces folks who write professionally about food is finding new vocabulary, new phraseology, new ways (frankly) to say the same old thing. I am particularly charmed, then, by a little bilingual restaurant guide to the Spanish island of Majorca which has come my way recently. Called “Mallorca a la Cart” (sic), this pocket-sized culinary Baedaker says some remarkable things about some local establishments. Zambra in Cala d’Or, for instance, is said to be “perhaps a little too frivolous in their contents and denomination.” Ca’n Ripoll in Inca is said to have “best selection of wines and cigars, if the Spanish state tobacco functions properly, or as the commercial roguery of its owner permits.” Los Gauchos in Palma is described as “an establishment in Argentinian style with meats and desserts without excessive displays of imagination or disagreeable surprises. And with good and pretentious dishes.” Visitors to Es Verger in Esporles are advised to “go without ambitions, enjoying the landscape after having driven along a number of curves.” And then, back in Palma, the guidebook really takes the gloves off: “Another recently opened restaurant,” it notes of that city’s Ulises, “cashing in on the gastronomic boom, with a grand propagandist show. Pretentious decoration, profuse service. The raw material is of quality, and one should say it deserves better luck, but the imagination of the kitchen does not seem to be of a dominant note since there are barely any popular dishes--fishcake for example--which merit esteem. . . .” And then comes the final blow: “Bad translation of the menu.”

MYSTERY MEAT: Some weeks back, I noted that I had received an engaging postcard from a gentleman named Chuck, asking me to visit his restaurant near Magic Mountain. The problem was that he neither gave me the name of the place nor his own last name--making the establishment a bit difficult to find. I must belatedly report that he has written in again, revealing that the restaurant is called the Blue Moon in Castaic Junction.

LEFTOVERS: Outside China opens this month in Studio City, featuring dim sum and other Chinese snack food, and Bao Wow, featuring the same, opens a new location in Encino. . . . Fresh abalone is on the menu at the Grill in Beverly Hills every Monday night (almost every Monday; call to be sure)--at $22.50 for the abalone and a plate to put it on, period. (Just because abalone comes out of its shell doesn’t mean it’s a social animal, after all.) . . . And an establishment known as R Donuts has opened in far off Fort Lauderdale, Fla. I know that’s a long ways away, but I mention it just in case some of you might think the trip was worth it: At R Donuts, both coffee and do(ugh)nuts are $1 a throw; the waitresses who serve them, on the other hand, are topless. “We do have a lot of eye openers,” proprietor Andy Emery, a 71-year-old retiree, recently told Nation’s Restaurant News.