From Tuesday’s New York Times Frequent Flier feature:

A Restaurant Owner Bites Into Something Foul, Dark and Winged

By Ken Oringer, as told to Joan Raymond

That would be Boston restaurant owner Ken Oringer, whose eateries include Clio, Uni, Toro, KO Prime, and La Verdad. From his first-person account in the Times:

I was a guest chef at a big festival in South Africa and decided I was going to extend my stay so I could see the Seychelles, a place I always wanted to go. The islands were as beautiful as everyone said. I got really excited when I found this little restaurant on one of the islands. The scents were amazing. I asked a staff member about the house special. It was bat.

I had never eaten bat, but I figured that since bats eat fruit, it couldn’t be that bad. I ordered mine grilled. I can honestly say it was the single worst thing I have ever eaten in my entire life. The wings have more bones than any piece of fish on the planet. I’m lucky I didn’t choke.

But choking may have been preferable to spitting out bat stubble, which I had to do since the bat wasn’t cleaned all that well before cooking. The meat, all one-half ounce of it, was nasty. The only way I knew I could get the taste out of my mouth was by drinking some tequila. There wasn’t any. In fact, there was no liquor at all.

Several other restaurant patrons and I took a ferry to get to another island. I got sick, so did most everyone else who ate bat. It was like a horror movie. I’m still trying to get the image out of my head of bat flying out of my mouth.

The things we do for love of food, eh?