Wild Game

The recent animal problems in Ohio reminded me that new Orleans once had a restaurant that served exotic wild game. Here is an excerpt from Gambit Magazine, Feb 5, 2008:

T. Pittari's was perhaps the most unusual restaurant that ever existed in the Big Easy. I know it's hard to believe, but there really used to be such a place at 4200 S. Claiborne Ave. The restaurant was established in 1895 by Anthony Pittari. When he died in 1938, his nephew Thomas Pittari acquired the restaurant and the family recipes.

The menu, which advertised French and Italian cuisine, was later expanded to include a special page where the 'wild" things were featured. It was subtitled 'large game." From here, if you were timid, you could order your basic, ordinary venison. For the adventurous, however, there were more difficult choices. Would you have bear steak, Western buffalo steak, or hippopotamus steak? Occasionally, a waiter would tell you that even more exotic creatures were the feature of the day: water buffalo, mountain sheep and whale. Appropriately, these meals were served with wild rice.

The restaurant closed in the early 1980s.

They say you can tell when you are at a zoo in Louisiana because the animal descriptions include recipes. Looks like a gourmet opportunity was lost here. Just Sayin'.