About five months after Chicago restaurants were ordered to stop selling foie gras, the city has yet to levy its first fine.
While some pricey restaurants around the city have taken the goose or duck liver delicacy off their menus, others are flouting the city’s ban, listing it on menus and, in one case , framing the city’s warning letter.
Others are sidestepping the ban by including foie gras as a complimentary item with other dishes.
The city, which is being sued by restaurants over the ordinance, has sent out but a smattering of warning letters and has conducted just one inspection.
At one restaurant, the owner has treated his warning letter like it was from a celebrity praising a great meal.
“I did frame the letter and put it up on the sales counter,” said Doug Sohn, owner of Hot Doug’s, a gourmet sausage store.
French for “fat liver, ” foie gras is a paté-like spread made by force-feeding geese and ducks to expand their livers up to 10 times their normal size.
The controversial delicacy, served in high-end restaurants, has been the subject of legislation from New York to California and its production is already banned in a dozen countries, mostly in Europe.
Evoking Chicago’s past during Prohibition when a secret word gained entry into illegal establishments that served alcohol, at least one restaurant is rumored to be serving foie gras to customers who ask for the “special lobster” dish.
Meanwhile, such civil disobedience over what Mayor Richard Daley has called the “silliest” law the City Council has ever passed does not seem to be raising much ire with either the public or city officials.
The city’s health department reports that it has received a total of nine initial complaints about an establishment, each one prompting a warning letter like the one Sohn received. While the department says it sends inspectors to any establishment after a second complaint, so far inspectors have done so only once.
“As much as some supporters of the law and animal rights activists beat their chests over the issue, we frankly don’t get a lot of complaints,” said department spokesman Tim Hadac.
Activists, though, say the ban is working.
“Our supporters are going into restaurants and we’re told that they are not selling foie gras,” said Gene Baur, president of Farm Sanctuary, a national farm animal protection organization.
Those supporters apparently are not going to restaurants such as Hot Doug’s or Sweets & Savories, which even though it has been selling foie gras as it did before the ban has not been the subject of a single complaint.
“I kind of feel left out,” said the restaurant’s owner, David Richards, who said he would consider going to court if he got a ticket.
The city health department, meanwhile, makes no secret that it has little stomach for sniffing out establishments where foie gras is illegally served and scarfed.
“We need to focus as much as possible on things that actually make people sick and kill people,” Hadac said. “Our mission is to protect human health and not the health of geese and ducks.”
Hadac called the ban the department’s “lowest priority.”
At Copperblue, one menu item is the “It isn’t foie gras any Moore’ duck liver terrine” _ named after the ordinance’s chief sponsor, Alderman Joe Moore.
Chef and owner Michael Tsonton will not say how the dish differs from foie gras, and nobody with the city has asked.
The city’s one inspection ended without a citation because the restaurant, Bin 36, noted on its menu that the foie gras terrine was a complimentary addition to the wild mushroom confit salad. The ban prohibits selling the dish.
“They are not selling it; the menu made it clear they were offering it as a complimentary offering,” Hadac said. “For us that is the key thing.”
What inspectors did not ask, said executive chef and partner John Caputo, is whether the salad would cost as much if it did not nclude foie gras. It would not.
Moore, who led the effort to ban foie gras said he understands the health department has more pressing issues.
“The law doesn’t need to be changed,” Moore told the Chicago Sun-Times. “What needs to be changed is the city’s attitude toward enforcing the law.” Moore did not return several calls for comment from The Associated Press.
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