Ducking the Foie Gras Ban

March 30, 2007 — -- The Chicago hot dog -- all beef, mustard, no ketchup (ever), bright-green relish, onions, tomatoes, pickle and celery salt -- is famous across America.

And Doug Sohn makes thousands of them at his neighborhood sausage stand, or as he likes to call it, his house of "encased meats."

Over the years, Doug's restaurant, Hot Doug's, has gone beyond the original working man's hot dog. His shrine to sausage has become famous for the gourmet side of the menu -- a menu that until this year contained the now-infamous foie gras hot dog.

Foie gras, French for "fat liver," is a delicacy made from duck or goose liver. The Chicago City Council last year banned the high-end culinary treat on the grounds of animal cruelty, making it illegal to sell at restaurants within the Windy City's limits.

But Sohn kept selling his foie gras hot dog, flagrantly listing the outlawed treat on his menu board alongside cartoon pictures of a duck. Sohn kept on selling until he became the target of Chicago's first foie gras bust. This week he was in court to pay a $250 fine for his action.

Sohn wasn't the only one to disobey the law. He was just the only one to get caught. Just after the ban was introduced in August, a group of Chicago restaurateurs joined forces in an act of civil and delicious disobedience, staging a foie gras feast on a grand scale.

Critics of the law think it's silly, a waste of authorities' time and a case of the government encroaching on personal liberty. Some wonder whether the foie gras bust of Hot Doug's signals a rise of the politically correct food police.

Animal rights activists and supporters of the foie gras ban say the food's production process is cruel and inhumane. The 25 million ducks and geese raised each year for this purpose are made ready by being overfed in the weeks before slaughter so that their livers become huge, tender and buttery. 

That process was enough to turn Chef Charlie Trotter off foie gras for good. Trotter, one of the most famous cooks in America, stopped selling it in his restaurants about 10 years ago.