Critics Call It Beastly : Lion on Restaurant Menu Causes Uproar

The African lion is an animal of majesty and wonder. He is capable of arousing fear and curiosity, even worship. He is celebrated by animal rights groups, deified in legend and literature.

He is also being served in a San Diego restaurant.

Judson’s Restaurant and Galley Bar, a posh eatery on Sports Arena Boulevard, opened seven months ago, specializing in a “wild game” menu. Camel, antelope, buffalo, reindeer, venison, alligator and rattlesnake are some of the meats offered by Judson’s and its executive chef, Ernest A. Wally.

Just last week, Judson’s served lion, and the roaring hasn’t stopped yet.

“People say, ‘You ordered a lion to be killed!’ What am I,” said Wally, “a Mafioso? One woman called and said she was gonna picket. Is she gonna picket Burger King for killing cows?

“Hey, I don’t mind the controversy. It’s good for business. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, but if it’s legal, let me do it. Don’t restrict me and the freedom I have.”

Wally admitted getting phone calls and letters in a controversy fed entirely by “word of mouth.” Clients, even regulars, come in, notice lion on the menu “and immediately get mad,” he said. “But it’s their problem, not mine.”

In a city known for a zoo that prides itself on the preservation and restoration of endangered and protected species, Wally’s action seems bold and highly ironic. A tall, burly Austrian with a walrus-like mustache and a mop of curly hair, he prides himself on being a character, a maverick, an eccentric. Judson’s is owned by local entrepreneur Mark Grosvenor, who has given Wally his full authority.

Irony and emotions are not the only forces at work in the Judson’s lion-meat debate. Neither lion--nor any other beast on the Judson’s menu--is an endangered species. Most are “protected” under Appendix 2 of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES). “Protected” is a lower classification than “endangered.”

CITES is an international treaty to which the United States and about 90 other countries subscribe, according to Mel Holt, a special agent in the San Diego office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. His agency oversees the importation of foreign game.

Importers who carry the proper export papers--from “host” countries such as Kenya-- can , Holt said, legally breed and sell certain species of African game.

Although it may not be illegal to serve such game on platters in American restaurants, it remains “highly difficult,” if not impossible, Holt said, to trace the origins of the meat and sources who provide it.

As an example, Judson’s bought meat (including lion, antelope and alligator) from a Denver wholesaler. That person says he bought the meat from an importer, whose name he can’t remember. Where that person got the meat is merely a source of speculation, according to Judson’s and the Denver wholesaler.

Holt suspects that it came from a private game farm somewhere in this country--a conclusion supported by the wholesaler, who nevertheless isn’t sure.

Holt finds “disturbing” what he calls the trend of wild-game restaurants, springing up in the United States like herds of excited antelope. It is the trend--and not so much the nebulous questions of legality--that worries Holt and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

“As long as this is a faddish thing, we in the wildlife community are very concerned,” he said. “With supply and demand, a big black market could be the result. The potential for massive illegality isn’t so difficult to see.”

Holt said his office would look into the matter of where Judson’s got its meat--that is, its original, direct source.

For chef Wally’s part, he notes that the lion--51 pounds of leg, 27 pounds of loin, at $11.50 a pound--was bought from Dale’s Exotic Game Meats, the Denver-based firm specializing in “wholesale wild game.” Jim Thomas, a Carlsbad-based representative with the firm, said, “We bought the lion out of Chicago or New York, but I don’t remember the name of the agency.

“I don’t know where it came from. It probably came from a private game farm, but we buy from different sources. These things are raised and killed under controlled regulations--that’s the only way we can sell it. In other words, a guy just can’t drag a camel in off the street.”

“Roasted saddle of camel” is one of the items on Judson’s menu and along with lion was served at the restaurant’s Friday night “Valentine’s party,” where entrees of both went for $23.50.

Thomas said Dale’s Exotic Game Meats would continue to supply Wally with lion “for as long as he wants it,” but he continued to be vague, even evasive, about where it came from and how it got here.

“The (name of the) game preserve--I can’t tell you, no way,” he said. “The meat came from an agency back East. I’m not trying to hide it. I just don’t know the name of it.”

He did say that Dale’s Exotic Game Meats has a California license, which he said permitted the sale of meats--such as lion--to restaurants such as Judson’s. For what he does, no other permit is needed, he said, a claim Holt supports.

He seemed not to be aware, however, that federal permits are required for the importation of African game. That would be the worry of the importer, whom Thomas didn’t know. He referred all other queries to Dale Beier, owner of the firm, which has been in business 19 years.

Beier said by telephone from Denver that most of his meat, including lion, comes from private game farms in the United States. He claimed not to know, however, who provided the meat being served at Judson’s.

“I’m not sure it came from back East, or Texas,” he said. He also wasn’t sure that it didn’t come from Africa.

“There’s a large game farm (in a country) right outside Kenya,” he said, saying he didn’t know which country. “I didn’t buy it from there, but the person I bought it from may have bought it there. I deal with 11 different companies. Some are importers, others distributors like me. A lot of it is raised right here (in the United States), then slaughtered in state-inspected plants. Exactly where Judson’s lion came from is difficult to answer. I’m afraid I just don’t know.”

It could have come from Riverside or Los Angeles counties. Beier said both have sizable game farms that periodically cull their herds, allowing men like him to come in, buy the meat and the fur, then barter it on an open market.

Jeff Jouett, a spokesman for the San Diego Zoo, said several irate callers had telephoned zoo personnel, asking them to investigate the origins of Judson’s “grilled lion leg.” Jouett said a check by zoo curators found that some East African game preserves, in Kenya and other countries, periodically cull their herds, if the size of the lion population rises higher than legal limits.

“Assuming that’s the case, we shouldn’t have a complaint,” he said. “If that’s the case, it’s legal, and may be ethical, though we at the zoo find it personally abhorrent.”

Jouett said the money raised by African game preserves, whether by culling or other means, is often used for animal conservation programs. He also defended the practice of culling, which one source laughingly called “a euphemism for murder.”

“If lions reproduce regularly,” Jouett said, “you can get too many for the size of a preserve. This is dangerous, since lions are predators. They will search and destroy other animals. If left unchecked, they can veer outside the boundaries of the preserve and prey on cattle and domestic animals. They can end up being shot as vermin. It’s a waste for a lion to die and rot and be picked over by vultures (as opposed to being eaten by humans).”

Carmi Penny, one of the zoo’s curators of mammals, said, “My personal reaction is, as long as it’s legitimate, and all the paper work is in order, I see nothing to be overly concerned about. If it’s not (in order), then (the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) should be involved in checking it out--vigorously. But that’s their job, not ours. We are not an enforcement agency.”

Keith Tucker, North American representative of the East African Wildlife Society, owns a travel agency in San Diego. He had heard of Judson’s menu and called Limo Kollum, head of the Kenya Tourist Office for the western United States, based in Los Angeles. Kollum knew nothing, Tucker said, of lions being culled on Kenyan preserves.

“I, personally,” Tucker said, “have never heard of animals being sold to benefit conservation parks or preserves in Africa. However, it’s probably not illegal--lions are not endangered.”

Tucker echoed Jouett’s “personally abhorrent” concern, saying, “I know we kill cows, sheep and so forth, but they’re grown for meat. A lot of people have a personal attachment to (lions). I personally have a love affair with them. I wouldn’t want to eat a lion myself. I’m offended by that, but that’s personal.”

Tucker said the lion’s most noble and endearing quality was its reverence for family. “They stick together, take care of their young,” he said. “When you look at them, it’s like looking at your own family.”

“It’s a shock to our culture to see a lion leg offered in a restaurant,” said Holt of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “It’s a conflict in the mind. We’re raised with the notion that such critters are mystical and magical. And now, they’re reduced . . . to a plate.”

Beier knows of wild-game restaurants that have opened only recently in Chicago and Boston, and smaller cities such as Santa Fe, San Antonio, Minneapolis and Miami. In a soliloquy that might offend moral vegetarians everywhere, he championed the eating of wild game as “a health-food alternative.”

“More and more we’re seeing all types of restaurants get into it,” he said, “and not just the fancy European-type places. Doctors are recommending patients to us--patients who need high-protein, low-fat, low-cholesterol food. Heart and allergy doctors are sending patients to us. Weight-control experts are flocking to us. It’s not just a novelty, it’s on the forefront, I’d say, of a nation’s health consciousness. California has more health-conscious people than anyplace. No wonder Judson’s is doing so good.”

“If available, we’d like to keep it on the menu,” Wally said. “It’s a sought-after item--very much so. It’s not that we kill the lion. If available on the market, we’ll carry it. The price doesn’t matter. Dining on lion is adventurous, exciting. It tastes like rare pork--chewy and tangy. People like the taste, and the feeling--the safari-like challenge. But it ain’t like we’re serving lion and eggs for breakfast every morning.”

Wally, 42, has been a chef for 29 years. He said he had served his apprenticeship in “the world’s oldest-known restaurant,” Griechen-Beisl , in Vienna, where he was born and raised. Griechen-Beisl is, he said, more than 900 years old. Wally’s prowess as a chef is hardly in question. He and Judson’s have drawn gushing reviews from most San Diego critics. His tolerance for abuse and controversy also isn’t doubted.

“Few people have the (guts) to put up with this,” he said.

Most of the flak has involved lion and, he said, reindeer. The latter was introduced at Christmas.

“There was the connotation of killing poor Rudolph,” he said sarcastically. “There’s also a flip side. As soon as we don’t have lion, people are gonna pressure me. People have no idea. What do they think I do, pick up the phone and call 1-800-JUNGLE?

“People on the other side (of the current debate) are even more amazing. No, I don’t see anything unethical about it! What am I gonna do-- pet the lion? People don’t know where they come from, what they look like . . . Nobody minds eating a poor cow, but serve ‘em reindeer, and they’re suddenly, violently (mad).

“I call it stupid--a warped sense of compassion. To me, it sounds like racism: ‘It’s OK if you’re Jewish, Chinese or Buddhist, as long as you’re not black.’

“I can’t document where the lion came from (its original source)--I just haven’t seen the papers (held by the importer). But neither did I order a lion to be killed. Any meat you eat is killed. Calves’ liver comes from a tiny baby calf. To eat beef, you kill a cow.

“Truthfully, I would rather not have done it (introduce lion to the menu). But I will not buckle under. Some bigot telling me I shouldn’t serve lion isn’t gonna faze me--not in the slightest.

“My goal is not to offend,” he said with a smile. “It is only to bring gastronomic pleasure to all people everywhere.”