Foie Friday #5: Foie Gras Wars, Ethical Foie Gras in Spain

I started reading Foie Gras Wars, by Mark Caro. The first chapter talks about the beginning of the foie gras ban in Chicago. Supposedly, the controversy gained significant attention from the masses because of a comment Charlie Trotter made about another chef, Rick Tramonto. Trotter had silently removed foie gras from his menu for two years and slowly it became known that he had refused to serve foie gras because of what he had seen at foie gras farms lately disillusioned him. Fellow chefs' responses ranged from support to acceptance to disapproval. Rick Tramonto had the latter view and apparently Trotter said that they should just eat Tramonto's liver because "he [was] certainly fat enough." Since people love scandals and fights, this of course made the news and garnered the foie gras controversy a lot of traction. According to the author, even people who had not heard of foie gras before were then either going to restaurants to eat the stuff or camping out in protest.

I also wanted to share the following video from TEDTalks, which foodiebuddha had also shared with me. In it, Blue Hill's Chef, Dan Barber, talks about an ethical foie gras farm he visited in Spain. The farmer, Edouardo Sousa, allows the goose to roam around and eat whatever they want. No gavage here, and the resulting liver beat its force-fed counterparts in 2006, when it won a prize for best foie gras.

If foie gras farming can be this ethical, then we can have our cake (foie) and eat it too!

Mariscos El Mazateno (Tijuana, Mexico)

My last trip to Tijuana with Street Gourmet LA took me back to Mariscos El Mazateno, a Sinaloan seafood taqueria. I came here on my first trip to TJ, but back then I was even weaker to spicy food as I am now so it was nice to revisit and enjoy it even better this time.

The must order here is the Taco Mazatena (shrimp/camarones enchilado), a taco packed full of fresh, crisp, lightly spicy shrimp. If you walk by the kitchen, you can see them cooking the spicy shrimp in a giant pot.

Dress this with the available condiments including cabbage, crema, pico de gallo, and a bottle of house made spicy green sauce made with avocado and serrano chili. The shrimp taco to end all shrimp tacos!

The meals start with a styrofoam cup of shrimp consomme.
While waiting for our tacos, they served us a plate of seafood cocktail including shrimp, octopus, scallops, and more.

If you have room for another after the heaping shrimp taco, try the smoked marlin taco, equally stuffed to the brim.

The pulpo/octopus was also popular among the other diners.

The tacos here cost up to 40 pesos (around $3) and considering how much seafood you get with them, it's not bad at all. Whatever the price may be, the taco mazatena is a must try!


Mariscos El Mazateno
Calzada Tecnologico,No. 473-E
Tomas Aquino
Tijuana,BCN

Aziza (San Francisco)

With all the new restaurant opening and young celebrity chefs, it is easy to overlook older restaurants, but Aziza in San Francisco should not be. Aziza has been open for ten years (since 2001) but chef/owner Mourad Lahlou has continued to churn out great food. In 2010 it became the first Moroccan restaurant to receive a Michelin star and it has maintained that star since.

The restaurant is rather nondescript on the outside. A neon sign marks the location in amongst Chinese and Japanese restaurants in the Richmond district. Inside, a festively decorated restaurant typical of Moroccan restaurant. The food, on the other hand, is nothing like other Moroccan foods you've had.


We decided to skip the tasting menu and ordered what we wanted.
The cocktail menu at Aziza looked interesting and promising, but I was refraining from drinking alcohol so I went for the next closest thing: a Mate Mojito made by Taylor's Tonics ($6). Not really a mojito but it wasn't too sweet and was refreshing.

We started out meal with the lentil soup, medjool dates, celery, parsley ($8)

A great lentil soup that also became a mini treasure hunt as we look for that burst of sweet from the dates. This was only a small hint of what Aziza is about.

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