![]() She keeps an elk chop on the menu year-round and, come winter, “wild boar” lasagna returns along with a smattering of other game specials. ![]() Kate Metzger, executive chef of il Naso, said cooking with game presents challenges, but for a chef, that’s the draw. We find the best quality for the price for our customers.” “Now we sell to pretty much every restaurant in the Valley. Part of his impetus to set up shop 18 years ago was to bring a better quality and wider variety of game and seafood. ![]() “This was strictly a meat and potatoes town back then, not like Aspen or Vail,” said Mountain Pride owner Stuart Siderman. Mountain Pride is a Ketchum-based food distributor specializing in game and seafood. All other things being equal, it is healthier to consume game than commercial feedlot beef and pork.įood wholesalers are key to bringing quality game to chefs and to markets. According to game cookbook author Rebecca Gray, beef contains roughly 214 calories and almost 10 grams of fat while venison contains only 159 calories and 3 grams of fat, based on a 4-ounce serving size. And some game farms do their best to emulate conditions in the wild for their animals, from what they graze on to how they’re harvested.ĭemand from an increasingly game-hungry public has risen in the past decade for various reasons-an upswing in availability of farm-raised game, more adventurous eaters willing to step out of their beef and chicken comfort zone-but the most compelling one may be simple math. It may not be wild, but it is game that is, meat and fowl outside of domesticated cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and turkeys. So where does the elk and duck and rabbit on local restaurant menus come from? When diners order “wild game,” they’re getting farm-raised, USDA-inspected game. The USDA oversees all commercial food inspection to ensure public safety, but under the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Poultry Product Inspection Act, wild game is not “amenable to mandatory Food Safety and Food Service Inspection.” Without government inspection, wild game is essentially banned from commercial sale. Department of Agriculture (USDA) doesn’t consider “wild game” to be meat or poultry. In an ironic twist of definitions, the U.S. Idaho has more than 500 wildlife species, but don’t count on any of them landing on local restaurant tables.
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