Thanks to Shayna Glick for this post on Slashfood about the problem of feral camels in the Australian outback. I started to draft this piece back in February when I saw Shayna's post, but then I got caught up in jobseeking and for a while I didn't feel much like writing something funny. But now I'm in a much more humorous mood. And I'm sure the camels are still there.
Like most animals on this planet, camels are edible. Apparently camel meat is similar to beef, but lower in fat and cholesterol. "This sounds like another strange food on my list of things to try", Shayna commented, arousing my interest. Not having eaten it myself nor prepared any in a pro kitchen, but knowing how tough times are back home in Britain, I wondered whether camel eating had taken off there recently. After all, I had seen some unusual livestock during my Xmas break in North Yorkshire.
A search for "camel" using the Simply Recipes food blog search engine produced cyber-silence except for one or two posts about the benefits of camels' milk, of which more later. And before anyone points out that camels are not indigenous to Europe and the US, let me remind you that neither are ostriches, but there are dozens of ostrich recipes to be found on the blogs. Of the few recipes that showed up, there was stuffed camel from Rosa's Yummy Yums which, unsurprisingly, she hasn't attempted to cook as she's a vegetarian... and two recipes from The Old Foodie - one for camel stew which he admits is a spoof ("Will serve 3,800 people - if more are expected, add two rabbits") and another for roast camel hump which is more serious but, as someone pointed out, doesn't actually work.
No wonder the chap pictured above is happy to slap a big wet kiss on the camera - he's figured out there's little chance of ending up in a stewpot. Or is there? The feral camel problem down-under has led to a major research study. With a title as dry as a proverbial camel's armpit (Cross-Jurisdictional Management of Feral Camels to Protect Natural Resource Management and Cultural Values"), subproject 3 is: "Consumptive Use". That's eating the stroppy blighters to you and me. So I started my hunt for gastronomic camel with a dead cert - flamboyant Aussie chef Benjamin Christie. The result came as something of a shock. If the man with recipes for stingray, snake, goanna, kangaroo, emu, shark, crocodile and witchetty grub could offer nothing for camel, what hope was there for the far less adventurous Brits? I simply had to find out.
The first place I turned up was The Camel public house, not far from my old stomping ground in Bethnal Green. Their pie and mash menu sounded promising (camel pie?), but it transpired that their most exotic offering was Thai green curry which, on the assumption that Thailand isn't breeding green camels, wasn't going to satisfy my quest. The Elusive Camel Bar and Kitchen in Victoria was no more helpful, unless they're using minced camel to stuff their crispy gnocchi dish. And nor was The Camel at Tower Bridge. I found their Little Eats and Bigger Eats menus, but no hint of Giant Eats offerings. In fact the largest item on the menu was a 10oz rib steak - and I'm pretty sure it was from a pleasant, but otherwise very ordinary, cow.
The Camel Trail looked promising, with the name Rick Stein shining from the review page like a gastronomic beacon. What was Rick up to, I wondered? Goujons of camel with tartare sauce? Deep fried camel and chips? Fruits de Outback? I was disappointed to discover that the Camel is a Cornish river and the Camel Trail a recreational route along a disused railway line from Padstow to Blisland. Not to be put off that easily, I stepped up the search to discover a herd of camel close by. But Cornish Camels aren't breeding them for consumptive use. So - Frank, Jemima, Myrtle, Jasmine, Camomile, Maggie, Edith, Geraldine and Hilda - you can rest easy. Your worst fate will be obese holiday trekkers.
Oasis Camel Centre in Suffolk also promises lots of fun for all the family without actually eating them, as does Smallbrook Farm in the Forest of Dean and Folly Farm in Pembrokeshire. Rosuick Farm offers trekking fun for foreign spies close to the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station on the Lizard peninsula. And if that lot's not enough, Joseph's Amazing Camels (which I'm reliably informed has nothing whatsoever to do with Andrew Lloyd Webber) offers trekking for wimpish men and camel racing for real women. It's clearly caught on, as demonstrated by this feature at Newbury Racecouse, unfortunately cancelled due to foot-and-mouth disease.
With restaurant L'Estuaire on the Camel Estuary offering nothing more dangerous than deceased Cornish blue lobster and The Walnut Tree in West Camel serving nothing more exotic than deep fried squid rings, I was beginning to lose confidence in my research skills. So I checked the media websites for news of humped gastronomy. I was rewarded with an article in The Times announcing the world's largest camel barbecue but, alas, chef Christian Falco was performing this wondrous feat of cooking in Morocco. But my luck turned with this article in the Newcastle Chronicle about schoolkids experiencing the delights of camel curry, reindeer pate and deep-fried crickets. I'd found someone serving camel in Britain at last!
But the next media piece shocked me. Even in these liberal times, it's not every day that the BBC reports on customers inspecting a wild animal's private parts with a view to dinner. But pheew! I was mistaken. It was camel hump in a Beijing restaurant that had been, sliced, slowly braised and then battered and deep-fried. The journalist had peeled the batter off this one to reveal the camel kebab. "Its taste and texture is disarmingly similar to Spam" he reported, discouragingly. I got the distinct impression he'd have preferred to take a risk on camel penis instead.
This led me to Oxford's now-defunct Cock & Camel. "There's always something slightly different on the menu", exclaimed a former reviewer. Quite right, but not different enough. Maybe it was closed down by Trading Standards for selling neither. And no joy at the equally defunct Camel Restaurant in Mayfair, either, unless warm goats' cheese salad counts as exotic. Camel One looked really promising. It was my first curry house and there were clear hints of something exciting beneath the garam masala. "The chicken doner is something else... it is bright red", reported someone called Freddy. Perhaps he was admiring bright red camel meat, but I suspect that this may have been a celebrity diner gazing at his meal through bloodshot eyes after a night out in Rusholme before a one-day test match at Old Trafford.
I was convinced I was on the right track now, as I deserted the more traditional Anglo-French bistros and focused on ethnic dining rooms. Glasgow's Khublai Khan Mongolian Barbecue Restaurant (speciality: "Get Stuffed Mongolian Feast") looked a good bet. I could just see customers hitching their camels outside, only to return several hours later to discover that their transport had been whisked into the kitchens through the back door. Venison, boar, ostrich, springbok, zebra, kangaroo, yak, shark.... but no camel. Damn!
I found several other international restaurateurs dishing up the wild game - ceviche of crocodile, roast loin of springbok and grilled rattlesnake at Vivat Bacchus; sautéed reindeer at Northern Lights; crocodile fillet, seared zebra, gnu stew, marinated kangaroo, chilli & garlic locusts and chocolate-coated scorpions at Archipelago; springbok fillet, roast ostrich, zebra fillet and roast wildebeest at Dumela... but no sight of a one-humped dromedary or a two-humped bactrian anywhere. And this despite the Channel 4 Food website celebrating the pleasures of braised camel with vegetables & red wine and blogger Beast Feaster crowing about having cooked himself camel fillet with shiraz butter glaze.
"Maybe", I thought to myself, "the key to all this is climate". Camels come from the desert, QED they can't survive in Britain, thus camel meat will only appear on British menus when imported by passionate South African or Middle Eastern chefs. The BBC soon disavowed me of that idea. If African refugees could be helped to integrate by camel farming in Norwegian snow, then surely a few leaves on the line in Britain wouldn't be too much of a problem for the even-toed ungulates.
The media continued to raise my hopes of discovering British camel farming. The BBC declared that camels' milk could become the latest super-food to hit the shelves of Waitrose and Holland & Barrett, The Times excited Britain's female population with the announcement that camel milk chocolate is coming (David Lebovitz must be having a fit) and Psorolait was launched as a camel milk treatment for psoriasis, a welcome alternative to bathing in the Dead Sea without the unwanted side-effect of being impaled on an incoming Hamas missile.
And then I got the breakthrough I'd been hoping for. Searching for "alternative meat supplies", I found the wholesalers. Not just a couple, but wodges of them. Osgrow, Chakalaka, Barrow Boar, Alternative Meats, The Original Farmer's Market Shop, Gribble's Butchers, Elite meats and Althams Catering Butchers to name just a few. Camel meat suppliers in the southwest, the west, the midlands, the east, the north and northwest of England. So there must be loads of restaurants and bars serving it. Osgrow, after all, are offering trade discounts for purchases of 50kg, which may not be much to a 1,000kg bactrian but is a helluva lot for your dinner, especially when you add vegetables and gravy.
At last - many hours after I first interrogated Google - I discovered The Grand Union gastropub, located in London's Westbourne Park alongside the canal from which it derives its name. According to Time Out, delighted customers gorge themselves on camel pie - and, yes, the imported meat is from the Australian feral stock and thus not a threat to species sustainability. Add in the fact that the Head Chef is named Hervé and you have a waterside foodie paradise. But you also have a conundrum. If the wholesalers are knocking out camel in 50kg bags, yet this is the only eaterie I could find after several hours of internet research...
There are many possible explanations. Maybe I'm a crap researcher and restaurateurs will flood me with comments about their camel dishes. Perhaps the wholesalers inflate their sales figures. But I suspect that the answer is to be found in the sentence: "It is good to see the staff are still serving camel, despite Stella McCartney's protests" (a reference to James Martin and Stella McCartney getting the hump about the pub selling camel, zebra and llama). My bet is that camel chefs are keeping schtum.
Comments about "conserving wildlife" and "endangered animals" demonstrate all too clearly that opponents have done even less research than me. I must confess to a quiet snigger at the pub's riposte to one particular attack: "llama with figs and sultanas in tomato sauce is no longer available because the meat is now out of season." And I also rolled about laughing at the irony of Stella McCartney marketing a range of quilted camel bags - although in fairness I must point out that they're made from simulated leather and not the real thing.
I would no more eat meat from an endangered species or fish from unsustainable stocks than barbecue my pet cat. I'm 100% opposed to battery farming and I support campaigns such as Chicken Out. And I have great respect for non-meat eaters. My mother is one. But I'm an omnivore and no amount of anthropomorphism, including bestowing camels with cuddly names like Jemima or Jasmine, will change that. Next time I'm in London I shall definitely consider visiting The Grand Union to sample a camel pie. Mind you, if Disney has just released Charlie the Camel's Crazy Christmas, I might just reconsider.
A search for "camel" using the Simply Recipes food blog search engine produced cyber-silence except for one or two posts about the benefits of camels' milk, of which more later. And before anyone points out that camels are not indigenous to Europe and the US, let me remind you that neither are ostriches, but there are dozens of ostrich recipes to be found on the blogs. Of the few recipes that showed up, there was stuffed camel from Rosa's Yummy Yums which, unsurprisingly, she hasn't attempted to cook as she's a vegetarian... and two recipes from The Old Foodie - one for camel stew which he admits is a spoof ("Will serve 3,800 people - if more are expected, add two rabbits") and another for roast camel hump which is more serious but, as someone pointed out, doesn't actually work.No wonder the chap pictured above is happy to slap a big wet kiss on the camera - he's figured out there's little chance of ending up in a stewpot. Or is there? The feral camel problem down-under has led to a major research study. With a title as dry as a proverbial camel's armpit (Cross-Jurisdictional Management of Feral Camels to Protect Natural Resource Management and Cultural Values"), subproject 3 is: "Consumptive Use". That's eating the stroppy blighters to you and me. So I started my hunt for gastronomic camel with a dead cert - flamboyant Aussie chef Benjamin Christie. The result came as something of a shock. If the man with recipes for stingray, snake, goanna, kangaroo, emu, shark, crocodile and witchetty grub could offer nothing for camel, what hope was there for the far less adventurous Brits? I simply had to find out.
The first place I turned up was The Camel public house, not far from my old stomping ground in Bethnal Green. Their pie and mash menu sounded promising (camel pie?), but it transpired that their most exotic offering was Thai green curry which, on the assumption that Thailand isn't breeding green camels, wasn't going to satisfy my quest. The Elusive Camel Bar and Kitchen in Victoria was no more helpful, unless they're using minced camel to stuff their crispy gnocchi dish. And nor was The Camel at Tower Bridge. I found their Little Eats and Bigger Eats menus, but no hint of Giant Eats offerings. In fact the largest item on the menu was a 10oz rib steak - and I'm pretty sure it was from a pleasant, but otherwise very ordinary, cow.The Camel Trail looked promising, with the name Rick Stein shining from the review page like a gastronomic beacon. What was Rick up to, I wondered? Goujons of camel with tartare sauce? Deep fried camel and chips? Fruits de Outback? I was disappointed to discover that the Camel is a Cornish river and the Camel Trail a recreational route along a disused railway line from Padstow to Blisland. Not to be put off that easily, I stepped up the search to discover a herd of camel close by. But Cornish Camels aren't breeding them for consumptive use. So - Frank, Jemima, Myrtle, Jasmine, Camomile, Maggie, Edith, Geraldine and Hilda - you can rest easy. Your worst fate will be obese holiday trekkers.
Oasis Camel Centre in Suffolk also promises lots of fun for all the family without actually eating them, as does Smallbrook Farm in the Forest of Dean and Folly Farm in Pembrokeshire. Rosuick Farm offers trekking fun for foreign spies close to the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station on the Lizard peninsula. And if that lot's not enough, Joseph's Amazing Camels (which I'm reliably informed has nothing whatsoever to do with Andrew Lloyd Webber) offers trekking for wimpish men and camel racing for real women. It's clearly caught on, as demonstrated by this feature at Newbury Racecouse, unfortunately cancelled due to foot-and-mouth disease.With restaurant L'Estuaire on the Camel Estuary offering nothing more dangerous than deceased Cornish blue lobster and The Walnut Tree in West Camel serving nothing more exotic than deep fried squid rings, I was beginning to lose confidence in my research skills. So I checked the media websites for news of humped gastronomy. I was rewarded with an article in The Times announcing the world's largest camel barbecue but, alas, chef Christian Falco was performing this wondrous feat of cooking in Morocco. But my luck turned with this article in the Newcastle Chronicle about schoolkids experiencing the delights of camel curry, reindeer pate and deep-fried crickets. I'd found someone serving camel in Britain at last!
But the next media piece shocked me. Even in these liberal times, it's not every day that the BBC reports on customers inspecting a wild animal's private parts with a view to dinner. But pheew! I was mistaken. It was camel hump in a Beijing restaurant that had been, sliced, slowly braised and then battered and deep-fried. The journalist had peeled the batter off this one to reveal the camel kebab. "Its taste and texture is disarmingly similar to Spam" he reported, discouragingly. I got the distinct impression he'd have preferred to take a risk on camel penis instead.This led me to Oxford's now-defunct Cock & Camel. "There's always something slightly different on the menu", exclaimed a former reviewer. Quite right, but not different enough. Maybe it was closed down by Trading Standards for selling neither. And no joy at the equally defunct Camel Restaurant in Mayfair, either, unless warm goats' cheese salad counts as exotic. Camel One looked really promising. It was my first curry house and there were clear hints of something exciting beneath the garam masala. "The chicken doner is something else... it is bright red", reported someone called Freddy. Perhaps he was admiring bright red camel meat, but I suspect that this may have been a celebrity diner gazing at his meal through bloodshot eyes after a night out in Rusholme before a one-day test match at Old Trafford.
I was convinced I was on the right track now, as I deserted the more traditional Anglo-French bistros and focused on ethnic dining rooms. Glasgow's Khublai Khan Mongolian Barbecue Restaurant (speciality: "Get Stuffed Mongolian Feast") looked a good bet. I could just see customers hitching their camels outside, only to return several hours later to discover that their transport had been whisked into the kitchens through the back door. Venison, boar, ostrich, springbok, zebra, kangaroo, yak, shark.... but no camel. Damn!I found several other international restaurateurs dishing up the wild game - ceviche of crocodile, roast loin of springbok and grilled rattlesnake at Vivat Bacchus; sautéed reindeer at Northern Lights; crocodile fillet, seared zebra, gnu stew, marinated kangaroo, chilli & garlic locusts and chocolate-coated scorpions at Archipelago; springbok fillet, roast ostrich, zebra fillet and roast wildebeest at Dumela... but no sight of a one-humped dromedary or a two-humped bactrian anywhere. And this despite the Channel 4 Food website celebrating the pleasures of braised camel with vegetables & red wine and blogger Beast Feaster crowing about having cooked himself camel fillet with shiraz butter glaze.
"Maybe", I thought to myself, "the key to all this is climate". Camels come from the desert, QED they can't survive in Britain, thus camel meat will only appear on British menus when imported by passionate South African or Middle Eastern chefs. The BBC soon disavowed me of that idea. If African refugees could be helped to integrate by camel farming in Norwegian snow, then surely a few leaves on the line in Britain wouldn't be too much of a problem for the even-toed ungulates.The media continued to raise my hopes of discovering British camel farming. The BBC declared that camels' milk could become the latest super-food to hit the shelves of Waitrose and Holland & Barrett, The Times excited Britain's female population with the announcement that camel milk chocolate is coming (David Lebovitz must be having a fit) and Psorolait was launched as a camel milk treatment for psoriasis, a welcome alternative to bathing in the Dead Sea without the unwanted side-effect of being impaled on an incoming Hamas missile.
And then I got the breakthrough I'd been hoping for. Searching for "alternative meat supplies", I found the wholesalers. Not just a couple, but wodges of them. Osgrow, Chakalaka, Barrow Boar, Alternative Meats, The Original Farmer's Market Shop, Gribble's Butchers, Elite meats and Althams Catering Butchers to name just a few. Camel meat suppliers in the southwest, the west, the midlands, the east, the north and northwest of England. So there must be loads of restaurants and bars serving it. Osgrow, after all, are offering trade discounts for purchases of 50kg, which may not be much to a 1,000kg bactrian but is a helluva lot for your dinner, especially when you add vegetables and gravy.
At last - many hours after I first interrogated Google - I discovered The Grand Union gastropub, located in London's Westbourne Park alongside the canal from which it derives its name. According to Time Out, delighted customers gorge themselves on camel pie - and, yes, the imported meat is from the Australian feral stock and thus not a threat to species sustainability. Add in the fact that the Head Chef is named Hervé and you have a waterside foodie paradise. But you also have a conundrum. If the wholesalers are knocking out camel in 50kg bags, yet this is the only eaterie I could find after several hours of internet research...There are many possible explanations. Maybe I'm a crap researcher and restaurateurs will flood me with comments about their camel dishes. Perhaps the wholesalers inflate their sales figures. But I suspect that the answer is to be found in the sentence: "It is good to see the staff are still serving camel, despite Stella McCartney's protests" (a reference to James Martin and Stella McCartney getting the hump about the pub selling camel, zebra and llama). My bet is that camel chefs are keeping schtum.
Comments about "conserving wildlife" and "endangered animals" demonstrate all too clearly that opponents have done even less research than me. I must confess to a quiet snigger at the pub's riposte to one particular attack: "llama with figs and sultanas in tomato sauce is no longer available because the meat is now out of season." And I also rolled about laughing at the irony of Stella McCartney marketing a range of quilted camel bags - although in fairness I must point out that they're made from simulated leather and not the real thing.I would no more eat meat from an endangered species or fish from unsustainable stocks than barbecue my pet cat. I'm 100% opposed to battery farming and I support campaigns such as Chicken Out. And I have great respect for non-meat eaters. My mother is one. But I'm an omnivore and no amount of anthropomorphism, including bestowing camels with cuddly names like Jemima or Jasmine, will change that. Next time I'm in London I shall definitely consider visiting The Grand Union to sample a camel pie. Mind you, if Disney has just released Charlie the Camel's Crazy Christmas, I might just reconsider.
2007 and moved to Spain, where I trained in Barcelona at Carles Abellan's Comerç 24 (which won its first Michelin star) and Martín Beresategui's Lasarte (which won its second Michelin star) and was chef de partie and later Pastry Chef to Paco Morales at the amazing hotel restaurant Ferrero in the Valèncian mountains. This Spring I returned to London as part of the team of celebrated Portuguese chef Nuno Mendes, opening East End restaurant Viajante. I'm still working with food, but taking a break from fine dining. Passionately pursuing my life-long ambition to become a top-class chef and, one day, a world-famous restaurateur.
