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Foie gras and other essential elements for a Square meal in Mayfair
I remember vividly the first time I ever tasted foie gras. It was in a small place in Paris, specialising in the cooking of Perigord - Restaurant du Marche on Rue Danzig in the 15th arrondissement. I was about 14 at the time and on a family holiday. It was, I recall, an ecstatic experience - a bit like inserting a cocktail stick into your nose and gently teasing the nasal hairs, only better and a lot more expensive. I got to go back to Restaurant du Marche a few years later and ordered a meal consisting, I think, of pate de foie gras and then foie gras baked in foil with honey. It remained a culinary bench-mark for many years.
More recently, I have stopped eating foie gras, worried about the cruelty factor. It is true that if you leave geese and ducks to eat as much maize as they want, about 10 per cent will gorge themselves to the point where they quite naturally produce the required swollen and fatty livers. This, though, is hardly an efficient method of production, so the fowl are universally force-fed, a procedure that is effectively illegal in Britain and many other countries in Europe, although permitted in, for instance, Belgium and France.
That said, my decision not to eat foie gras is a personal one and I don't feel...