“Lets just get this out of the way: no, it does not taste like chicken.”
November 11, 2015 3:07 PM   Subscribe

The Burning Man of Birding: Inside Iceland's Puffin Festival by Brian Kevin [Audubon.org] For decades Icelanders have celebrated the Atlantic Puffin even while they've served it up on plates. But some traditions can't last forever.
These days, though, the only place to reliably find smoked puffin at Thjodhatid is in the concession tent, where, alongside cheeseburgers and chicken fingers, it’s sold for 1,500 krona, or about $12, per bird. That’s three times what it cost 20 years ago, making one little puffin an expensive snack; it’d take three birds to make a modest meal. So it isn’t a popular menu item—the concession tent has stocked just 600 birds for a three-day fest that regularly draws 16,000 people. Still, the puffin has its devotees.
posted by Fizz (30 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Would eat.

But, since they're on the decline, I'd guess I'd have to do the right thing and not eat them, even though I really want to try it and have that experience.
posted by Fizz at 3:08 PM on November 11, 2015


Wet day bin puffin?
posted by fairmettle at 3:10 PM on November 11, 2015


I really really really want Puffin numbers to improve cause smoked puffin is amazing, like duck from the sea and so intensely flavored you only need a handful.

I couldn't justify eating them on my last few trips to Iceland with their numbers so low.
posted by The Whelk at 3:11 PM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


Pauvre puffins!
posted by Kitteh at 3:27 PM on November 11, 2015


I eat Puffins every day.

it's actually decent cereal.
posted by GuyZero at 3:33 PM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


I eat Puffins every day.

Unfortunately, the bones lose their crunch and get all soggy after the first two or three minutes.
posted by Fizz at 3:43 PM on November 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


“Lets just get this out of the way: no, it does not taste like chicken.”

Jeremy Clarkson certainly wasn't impressed with the flavor.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:49 PM on November 11, 2015


I don't think tourists should get any Puffin until after chowing down on that special cured shark dish.
posted by sammyo at 3:55 PM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


no, it does not taste like chicken.

Two guys I worked with on tour boats in the Gulf of Maine had an opinion on this. One told me that puffins “tasted just like bald eagle.” The other, more seriously, said that he had eaten puffin late one night in the Canadian Maritimes – he mentioned that alcohol had been involved in his decision – and that his reaction had been entirely negative. “It tasted like fishy duck.”

on preview: I ate cured shark many decades ago, in Iceland, and was not much impressed.
posted by LeLiLo at 4:00 PM on November 11, 2015


Being accustomed to dreadful travel writing about Iceland, I was pleasantly surprised. I haven't been to Vestmannaeyjar since I was a kid, but the article feels right. It's easy to write a kooky-locals article about Þjóðhátíð (incidentally, approximately pronounced like THYOTH-how-teeth, with the first "th" pronounced like the "th" in "thick", the second two like the "th" in "this", and the "yo" like "yo").

Many bird populations in Iceland have collapsed. Many colonies around the country are barely surviving, especially those relying on sand eels. It's not just puffins, they're just the most iconic abroad. For instance, arctic terns have been badly hit as well.

In Iceland it hasn't really made it into public discourse that ocean warming might have disastrous ecological consequences, indeed has already had disastrous consequences. Iceland is one of the most important habitats for sea birds in the world. They rely on certain factors in the ecosystem. If these factors change too much, there could be a cataclysmic collapse across the board.
posted by Kattullus at 4:30 PM on November 11, 2015 [12 favorites]


not anti-hunting and I know many great people in the U.S. who are hunters and who do care about ecology and the environment and conservation

Just a small derail but while totally not anti-hunting I have suggested that for a large number of the clueless wandering the woods they should've been required to take their first kill a grizzly with only a nice big bowie knife....
posted by sammyo at 4:48 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've eaten puffin in Iceland. I had smoked puffin in blueberry sauce as part of a tapas menu. I seem to recall finding it sufficiently delicious. It didn't look anything like that picture, it was small pieces of meat in the blueberry sauce.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 4:57 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Btw, I had no idea at the time I ate puffin (5 or 6 years ago) that puffin numbers were low. When you see pictures there are always so many of them!

I did eat whale at that same meal and looked up the species to be sure it wasn't endangered before eating it. That whale tasted kind of like fishy-beef (texture and look of beef, but still some of that salty-from-the-sea taste) when I ate it cooked and kind of citrus-y when I ate it raw, though maybe they squeazed some citrus on it.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:11 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Many bird populations in Iceland have collapsed. Many colonies around the country are barely surviving, especially those relying on sand eels. It's not just puffins, they're just the most iconic abroad. For instance, arctic terns have been badly hit as well.

This is true, and where puffins in particular are concerned, their numbers have dropped so much that hunting season is down to single-digit numbers of days, with conservationists encouraging people to skip hunting them altogether. Ptarmigans, though, you can still hunt by the tens of thousands, and are tastier than puffins besides.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:20 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I ate puffin, along with whale and horse and an obscene number of other animals, as part of the tasting menu at a (by my provincial standards anyhow) fancy place in Reykjavík a couple of years ago. I spent the rest of my time there feeling like I probably ought to just immediately convert to lifetime vegetarianism in penance, although the violence done to my gastrointestinal tract by a 3 a.m. convenience store bacon-wrapped hot dog later in the same trip may have been a small portion of my due karmic redress.

More seriously, hearing about population collapses like this is sad as hell. Everybody probably should mostly stop eating animals. And casually flying thousands of miles on vacation. And, and, and...
posted by brennen at 5:21 PM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


there could be a cataclysmic collapse across the board

This statement sounds incredibly optimistic to me, Kattullus.

Eat up! Last chance!
posted by Meatbomb at 5:50 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I would say puffin tastes like oilier, fishy duck. I've had it once and probably wouldn't again if I have a choice. I have also taken a boat out to watch them fly and fish. They are pretty delightful -- they swim like champions, dive like masters, and fly like wildly flapping cakes of soap. I can see how warm waters would push their food north, making it difficult for them to breed. Sigh. We really are the worst. Except for geese; they are assholes and invest in companies that drive climate change.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:12 PM on November 11, 2015 [8 favorites]


puffins have salt glands above their nose that allow them to drink briny water, and excess saltwater dribbles out of their nose

i learned this from a box of puffin brand cereal

also puffins are adorable what kind of self respecting birder would eat one
posted by Gymnopedist at 6:12 PM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


But. They're cute little puffins. Why are we eating them? We're not supposed to eat the puffins right? That's like one of the lost commandments right?
posted by Annika Cicada at 6:53 PM on November 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


I've eaten puffin in Iceland.

[...]

I did eat whale at that same meal

posted by If only I had a penguin...


oh no

it all makes sense now
posted by indubitable at 7:15 PM on November 11, 2015 [14 favorites]


nobody send If only I had a penguin a puffin for quonsmas guys
posted by Gymnopedist at 7:17 PM on November 11, 2015


We're not supposed to eat the puffins right?

RIGHT!
posted by puffyn at 7:17 PM on November 11, 2015 [8 favorites]


When I was a little kid we had a dog named Puffin, after HR Puffinstuff. When I was old enough to read I looked up puffin in the dictionary to see if our dog was there, and instead there was a picture of a cute bird. So no way I could eat a puffin.
posted by Cookiebastard at 7:27 PM on November 11, 2015


We're not supposed to eat the puffins right?

I'm holding out until we get the lowdown from puffin boffin.
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:29 PM on November 11, 2015


But. They're cute little puffins. Why are we eating them? We're not supposed to eat the puffins right? That's like one of the lost commandments right?

Iceland is seriously short in food sources. There were times during the Middle Ages where you apparently couldn't grow grain. So, you know, you ate what you could find. They buried sharks for months to make them edible, and declared it a delicacy. That's desperation right there.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:07 AM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


The Coachella of Horticulture
The SXSW of Lepidoptery
The Gathering of the Juggalos of Stamp Collecting
posted by dephlogisticated at 5:52 AM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


sebastienbailard, I think you are misspelling "puffin buffin'," the common practice of using spells to increase your puffin's combat stats before a match in that popular collectible card game Puffin Sufflin': Beak to Beak All-Out Attack!!!. I admit I could be wrong.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:52 AM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


I could go for an Egg McPuffin right about now.
posted by Segundus at 6:52 AM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


If you want hard-core seabird subsistence living, the tiny North Atlantic island of St Kilda is the undisputed champion. The last native islanders were evacuated in 1930, but for thousands of years they lived on nothing else, creating huge stashes of dead birds over the summer to see them through the winter, lighting their homes with seabird stomach oil, making their shoes from dried skins and generally having what seems like a thoroughly miserable time.
posted by Devonian at 7:14 AM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


But. They're cute little puffins. Why are we eating them? We're not supposed to eat the puffins right? That's like one of the lost commandments right?

These days, it really should be. Despite the aforementioned population decline, I still see restaurants with menus geared towards tourists offering puffin on their menus. I don't know how many of these puffins were caught years ago and subsequently frozen, and how many are newly caught, but as a general rule it's good to avoid eating animals whose numbers are on the wane.

In the meantime, we wait for the herring numbers to come back up, because puffin stocks should start bouncing back then. Plus there's a lot of other birds here that are fatter, tastier and more plentiful.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 7:18 AM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


« Older "WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE DON'T EAT NO MEAT?"   |   Operation 007 Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments