COSTA MESA : Buffalo Roams Back to Menu

Buffalo meat is back at Benjamin Bennani’s pizza parlor, eight months after vandals broke in and wrote “Buffalo Killer” on the walls.

“At first, I didn’t want any trouble, so I took it off the menu,” said Bennani, owner of G&G; Pizza on Victoria Avenue. “But the customers were demanding I put it back. They like it.”

The controversy started in May after Bennani, 44, opened his doors one morning to find his restaurant had been vandalized. Anonymous letters also were received.

“The buffalo is for many a symbol of the wild and natural West which we humans have done our best to plunder,” one person wrote. “Buffalo roamed free before the west was ‘won’ and Indians respected them.”

The pizza parlor owner said he is not selling an endangered species.

“Most of the animals that meat companies sell are raised on game farms in the United States,” he said. “They don’t dare sell animals on the endangered species list.”

Bennani said he first tasted buffalo on Catalina Island and fell in love with the meat, which he now includes in pizzas and burgers.

“I guess I’m just buffalo batty,” he said. “I just hope the vandals don’t strike again.”