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Art Smith, owner of Capitol Hill’s Art and Soul restaurant and former personal chef to celebrity talk show host Oprah Winfrey, has drawn the ire of at least one donkey lover with his comments about the surprising deliciousness of the four-legged mammal.
On page 115 of the latest issue of National Geographic Traveler in the section titled “Cravings,” which is not available online, Smith tells the following story under the headline “Szechuan Surprise”:
“After visiting and meditating at the famed Lama Temple in Beijing, we walked down the incense-heavy road and came upon a little place where we had this amazing Szechuan shredded beef. We enjoyed it so much we had it again at another restaurant where it was called Spicy Ass Meat. This was alarming, so I asked he server, ‘Ass meat?’ And he said, ‘Like donkey!’ Well, we still loved this dish and I’d go back for it.”
His remarks have prompted the owner of Double Dot Ranch and Donkey Resort in Texas* to issue a fiery retort on YouTube. [EDITOR’S NOTE: The link is messed up but you can search for it under the title, “A man who eats donkeys.”]
Would you eat a donkey?
*EDITOR’S NOTE: A prior version of this blog post erroneously identified the location of the Double Dot Ranch and Donkey Resort as Alaska. It is located in Texas. The author, confused by the word Alaska appearing in the email address of the resort’s owner, regrets the error.
Photo by Stefan/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
