Grilled kangaroo, roast antelope or snake casserole, anyone? Michael Parsons reports on the growing market for exotic meats

WHAT IF YOU don’t “feel like chicken tonight”, as the cheesy ad puts it, and fancy something truly different for dinner instead to revive your jaded palate? How about kangaroo with mango and coconut? A crocodile steak? A snake casserole? Or, if you’re having a dinner party and really want to impress, why not wow your guests by dishing up roast antelope with figs and blue cheese (see recipe, below right)?

The Victorian surgeon and naturalist, Francis Trevelyan Buckland, scandalised London society in the 1860s with dinner parties featuring lurid dishes such as elephant-trunk soup, roast giraffe and Japanese sea-slugs. He believed that his fellow citizens’ dull diet needed spicing up, and his culinary adventures attracted considerable media attention.

More recently, American food writer Jerry Hopkins compiled a guide to “extreme cuisine”, with recipes including curried rat with noodles, herb- and Dijon-crusted yak tenderloin, and sweet and sour dog. While few Irish consumers would have the stomach for such radical treats, there is a steady and growing demand for exotic meats.

Co Tipperary’s grasslands are best-known for herds of dairy and beef cattle, but in the south of the county, at a premises in Cahir, the animal alphabet ranges from antelope to zebra. Gem Meats is the country’s leading importer of exotic meats, supplying shops, restaurants and hotels throughout Ireland with products including crocodile from Zimbabwe, ostrich from South Africa and snake from Vietnam.

General manager Tony Duggan says business is “plugging along despite the recession”. While acknowledging that the products cater to “a niche market”, he says the unusual foods are attracting growing public interest as people discover their alleged health and environmental benefits.

Antelope meat, for example, comes from animals that grow “free in the grass of the savannah that have not been exposed to any kind of artificial or chemical pollution” and are “free of undesirable hormones and antibiotics”. There are flavours to suit a range of tastes, with choice cuts from no less than five types of antelope, including the kudu (“meat is low-fat and has a beautiful dark red colour”) and the springbok (“very refined taste because the animals eat a herbal diet”). The company has recently expanded its range and now also supplies zebra and camel (which is very tender, apparently; like dry beef).

Duggan, whose ostrich-farming business in Co Tipperary was “wiped out by the foot-and-mouth outbreak” earlier this decade, set up Gem Meats in 2004 and now employs four people. His network of customers extends throughout the country from Cork to Wexford, Dublin to Ballina, Sligo to Letterkenny and into the North. He also sells directly to the public from his warehouse in Cahir. The importation of these meat products is governed by EU and Irish legislation and Gem Meats is not only licensed to import but maintains “strict adherence” to standards and guidelines laid down by the Food Safety Authority.

NOT SURPRISINGLY, many people have an aversion to exotic meats and, as Duggan puts it, “have a thing about eating Skippy”. But sceptics, it seems, are often pleasantly surprised when they try the meats. As Jonathan Swift once pointed out: “He was a bold man who first swallowed an oyster.”

Duggan touts the health benefits of exotic meats, which are “much lower in fat than, for example, beef”. He claims that “100g of beef contains 15.3g of fat and 270 calories, while the antelope equivalent contains only 2.5 grams of fat and 120 calories”.

Despite the costs of importation, he says that exotic meats are good value and that he “can sell you a top prime ostrich fillet cheaper than a beef fillet”.

The products are mostly sold in specialist food stores and organic butchers. Gem Meats, which also supplies more traditional wild game, such as pheasant and venison, does not sell to supermarkets.“Supermarkets are not worth dealing with,” Duggan says. “They just want to bleed you dry.”

His customers include Fresh – The Good Food Market, which has four shops in Dublin. At the company’s Camden Street branch, general manager Greg Grouse confirms that “the butcher’s counter sells antelope, kangaroo, crocodile and ostrich”. He also gets “regular orders for bison from bodybuilders at the gym upstairs, as the meat is good for muscle-building”.

Grouse says that the exotic meats sell well and that stocks are replenished weekly. Nervous or curious customers who wish to sample before buying should keep an eye out for regular tastings in the shop.

ALAN O’DWYER (44), who lives in Cahir, has become a fan of exotic meats since discovering that ostrich is “low in cholesterol and tastes great”. He often cooks exotic meats “on the barbecue” as “beef and chicken can be boring”. He recently served “bison bangers, crocodile, ostrich steaks and wild boar” to guests, who “didn’t know what they were getting, but all said it was fantastic”. They were astonished when he told them what they had eaten.

O’Dwyer says his wife (“a finicky eater”) and sons also like exotic meats, while his daughter (13) refuses to eat them, “maybe because she watches the wildlife programmes”. He especially recommends “crocodile, thinly sliced in a salad”, describing the meat as “nice and light on your palate – really lovely”.