010424 Meat Scares Germans Towards Ostrich

Berlin - Those seeking real German cuisine in Berlin flock to the Staendige Vertretung restaurant, where they can dine on Sauerbraten or the specialty pickled pork knuckles and slosh it down with a light Koelsch beer.

But a rarer beast on the menu is growing in popularity: ostrich.

With consumers scared by mad cow disease and Europe's food crises, German chefs are choosing the big bird as an alternative to beef and traditional meats, stocking menus with tender ostrich steak, ostrich goulash and spaghetti with ostrich sauce.

“When I had it on the menu 10 years ago, it was really avant garde,” said Friedel Drautzburg, owner of the riverside restaurant in the heart of Berlin. “Today, there's a real trend toward eating more ostrich.”

Since the first case of mad cow disease - the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE - was detected in Germany last November, beef consumption has dropped by 70%.

Although it's begun a gradual recovery, the market is still at only 50% of its pre-mad cow figure, said Dietmar Weiss, head of the department of livestock and meat at ZMP, an organization that reports on the food industry.

Across Europe, lower beef consumption has fostered a taste for alternative meats. Demand for reindeer is up in Sweden, while Italians have been making horse meat and lamb more popular.

In Germany, the trendy non-beef meat of choice is ostrich, which tastes like a mixture of venison, poultry and beef. It's grown so popular here that ostrich importers say they can't get enough.

“Demand for ostrich has increased and we would import more if we could, but unfortunately, it's not available,” said Andrea Teinemann, a sales assistant at Schloss Goehrde Tiefkuehl Produktion, a company that imports ostrich from South Africa. The company imports 25% more ostrich meat today than it did three months ago, she said.

Alexander Frank, a purchaser at Berlin's world-famous KaDeWe department store, said demand for ostrich meat has increased between 60 and 70% since November. At KaDeWe, ostrich meat costs $10.50 a pound, considerably more than beef steak at $6 a pound or pork fillet at $5.50 a pound.

The general trend is still toward people eating more conventional beef alternatives such as poultry, fish and pork, according to Mark Schnerr, spokesman for the German Hotels and Restaurants Association.

And beef has never really disappeared from menus.

“People have been avoiding bloody steaks, but they have been much more willing to eat beef under any other name,” said Bernd Matthies, who writes about gastronomy for the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel.

But many chefs see the current crisis as an opportunity for culinary creativity.

“This is a big chance for us to offer new things,” said Herbert Beltle, the chef at Aigner, an upscale restaurant that specializes in German and Austrian cuisine.

Ostrich “doesn't just fill a gap. It's a real alternative,” said restaurant owner Yves Risacher, who praises the bird's nutty flavor. He said as long as it remains readily available in Germany, it will become a permanent staple at his Risacher restaurant, which specializes in French and German cuisine.

It is even catching on in people's homes. Swantje Weber, a 31-year-old student who lives in Hanover, said she gave up beef after the BSE outbreak and began to eat ostrich more often, having first tasted it on vacation in South Africa. She now prepares ostrich about once a month.

“It's delicious and not too fatty,” she said. “It was harder to find it in the stores before. I think it's easier to find now.”

Risacher said the proof of the ostrich's popularity is on his customers' plates.

“So far, everyone who has ordered it has eaten it all,” he said. “No one has left any food on his plate.”

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com