Seal meat. Photo: tootsmabel/flickr

Here's one food that may or may not get your seal of approval.

Seals -- the same lovable, clapping sea creatures that are a favorite zoo attraction and poster child for animal activism -- are being served for dinner by our neighbors to the north.

The New York Times reports a small number of fine dining institutions in Canada are incorporating seal meat into their menus.

Combine the unusual nature of the meat (the taste has been described anywhere from gamey to beefy to fishy) with the fact that the European Union recently banned imports of Canadian seal products, and suddenly the seal-serving restaurants have become both a target for hate mail and unforeseen hungry tourists.

Hear from one seal-serving chef after the jump.

Denis Painchaud is one such "seal-server" who appears in the Times article. He spoke to Slashfood from his restaurant, Auberge Chez Denis à François on the island of Hâvre-Aubert in Quebec, on Wednesday afternoon.

There, one appetizer on his English-translated menu is simply "seal with caramelized onions." He marinates it in red wine, braises it and serves it alongside caramelized onions. Painchaud tells Slashfood he offers seal in his restaurant simply because "it was available and we know that people like to try it -- and it's quite popular here."

And when asked why people don't eat seal, Painchaud doesn't blame the hunt -- he says it's the taste.

"I don't think it's because of the seal hunt. Nobody says that," Painchaud says. "I think that it's because some people don't like liver – seal's very similar to liver or game meat."

Most chefs, like Painchaud, treat the meat delicately, serving it as a tartare or lightly searing it. One chef featured in the Times article, Benoît Lenglet of Au Cinquième Péché, goes so far as to feature seal a variety of ways on his menu, including smoked and as seal pepperoni.

Canada permits two separate hunts each year, the Times said. The first, a small-scale hunt for sustenance by the Inuits, is not the issue. It's a larger-scale hunt on the Atlantic coast that's drawn the ire of the Canadian Humane Society and activists. This hunt is commercial, mostly for the fur trade, and hunters can kill up to a quota of 280,000, the paper said.

Hunting seals has been banned since 1972 in the United States, so you won't see seal on any menus stateside.



For those of you who have tasted seal, what did you think?

[Via New York Times]