When Zoo Animals Were On The Menu In Paris

The French are famous for their fine gastronomy but for several desperate months in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War Parisians were forced to eat anything they could find, including zoo animals. German forces had surrounded the city and cut off food shipments to Paris. The result was the consumption of nearly every animal in Paris—horse to rat, dog to zoo elephant. There was no food for the animals and they likely would have died of starvation if they were not eaten.

The Christmas Day 1870 menu (below) at Paris’s Voisin restaurant is famous. It included stuffed donkey head, elephant broth, kangaroo cooked in red wine and onions, roast camel, antelope, bear, wolf and even cat surrounded by rats.

 And it was all washed down with some good wine.

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