You Can't Make an Omlette with Faberge Eggs 🇸🇪🍕

I asked Anders if he wanted me to order our pizzas.

“Best not,” he told me. “They won’t serve this to a stranger. Grab a seat, I’ll come to join you.”

This place looked the same as the other pizza restaurants we’d visited, except for the fishtank in the corner. Anders was only at the counter for a couple of minutes to make the order, then came back.

“What are we having?” I asked.

“Ever heard of ortolan?”

I had. I’d eaten it in East London, sent by a magazine as part of an article on London’s illegal entertainments. Both the magazine and the chef were trying to be edgy, side-effects of a city with too much money, too much cocaine, and not enough decorum. I wrote an account of my meal which failed to go viral, unlike some of the other writers’ work.

“Will we put napkins over our heads as we eat this?” I asked Anders.

He laughed. “People only do that to hide their decadence from God. The ortolan pizza is something different.”

The restaurant where I once ate ortolan was called Cuckoo. It was set up in the premises of another restaurant that had gone bust. The windows were still whitewashed, and there were only a few tables, this furniture cheap and tacky, at odds with the grandeur that drove the former owners to bankruptcy. I don’t know if this was temporary or if they wanted that makeshift feeling below the fancy chandeliers.

A couple of the mismatched tables were shoved together and six of us sat there while the chef explained. An ortolan is a small migratory bird, which the French catch in nets. They only eat at night so, while caged, they are tricked into gorging themselves by being blinded with needles. When the time comes, the bird is drowned in Armagnac while alive, before being quickly plucked and roasted for seven minutes. They are then eaten whole.

We’d been told to cover our heads with napkins before we ate. The bird on my plate, fat and round, was little bigger than my thumb. I placed it feet first in my mouth. The first bite was pain and pleasure, trying to cool scalding juices, the fat tasting sweet and nutty. Chewing into the organs brought more complex, bitter tastes, before I ground down bones that stabbed my gums, drawing blood. I was glad that the napkin shroud covered my open mouth as I slobbered, trying to cool the bird. It also put me into my own calm world, cutting off everything else. It was just me and the tiny creature that I was chewing. I’ve never been so aware of what I was eating, impossible to pretend it hadn’t once been alive.

It took time to grind that tiny body into something I could swallow. I’m not sure I’d enjoyed the experience, intense as it was, but the ones who’d paid hundreds of pounds for the dish seemed enraptured. I stayed around for a glass of wine, then went home to write it up. The article was forgotten, but the experience has stayed with me. I felt sorry for that bird.

Anders listened to my description and said little, simply nodding. Our conversation drifted, talking about logistics and where we would stay that night. We were interrupted once the pizza arrived.

“Where did these come from? They’re expensive, even in France.”

There were three of the birds on the pizza, but without the grandeur of Cuckoo’s presentation. The ortolan were disrespectfully covered in cheese.

“Forget about it,” said Anders. “Eat up.”

I remembered the sense of occasion from the last time I’d eaten ortalon: how it felt to be underneath the napkin, cut off from the room around me, wholly focussed on what I was about to do. I ate a few bites of pizza until I had trimmed away enough to consume one of the birds. The bread and cheese dulled the sensations I should have encountered, overpowering the subtle flavours. I wanted to spit the mess into a serviette, but that seemed wrong. Every grinding of my teeth was a chore, masticating the mess into something I could swallow. It was as difficult to chew as the first time, possibly harder as the bird had been overcooked. Ortolan pizza was a ruin of a dish. It was some time before I swallowed the last of it.

“Good, no?” asked Anders, and I told him it was.

There were two more left.

Background

This is another of my Swedish Pizza stories, which are growing towards eventually being a small collection. There’s something of an explanation here.

Ortalon has appeared in a few TV shows, including Hannibal and Succession. There’s also a magazine article about it being eaten by terminally ill President Mitterand, The Last Meal. Researching this piece, I also found a description of it from journalist Bredan Kiley in his article The Urban Hunt, which is quite a piece of writing - Kiley explores eating the animals of Seattle, including pigeon, rat and slug.

Would I eat ortalon? After almost a quarter-century of vegetarianism, I’m not sure I physically could. The cruelty of it disgusts me. But the idea of this dish, and the rituals around it, continue to fascinate me.

Recommendations

Department of Midnight by Warren Ellis is an audio drama about John Carnack, who works for the Department of Experimental Oversight. It’s a strange blend of horror, folklore and sci-fi in the tradition of Quatermass.

I’ve always wanted to explore audio drama, but I quickly fall off most of them. When done badly they’re cheesy. I tried an episode of Blackout but the ads slipped in too jarringly beside the diegetic radio broadcasts. I like what I’ve heard of Welcome to Night Vale but the twelve years of back catalogue is intimidating.

Ellis’s dramas are short two-handers, with James Callis playing Carnack as gruff and irritable. There are some of Warren Ellis’s usual tropes, all honed for audio drama. The longest episode is 26 minutes, so none of these outstay their welcome. Ideas from physics and folklore studies are fused to great effect and each episode works independently, building up a longer storyline.