No More Foie Gras Funny Business at Broadway by Amar Santana

Laguna Beach high-end restaurant Broadway by Amar Santana on Friday ended its short-lived experiment in culinary rebellion, with partner Ahmed Labbate informing Matthew Strugar, a lawyer for activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, that they will no longer serve foie gras.

“We are no longer serving Foie Gras!” read Labbate’s email to Strugar. PETA subsequently sent out a press release trumpeting the news.

The restaurant made the move after its chef, Amar Santana, recently started flaunting the statewide foie gras ban that’s been in effect since last July, tweeting and posting on Facebook a photo of himself hunched over a piece of foie gras, and speaking to the news media about serving the taboo entrée to customers.

Santana was careful to note, though, that he never actually sold foie gras, which would have been a clear violation. Rather, he said he offered it free with the purchase of a particular glass of $55 dessert wine -- a loophole that other chefs in California (as well as in Chicago, during the brief period foie gras was outlawed there) have used to skirt the law.

That didn’t stop PETA from sending Santana letters threatening legal action, and only encouraged nasty emails from the public, which Santana says have filled his inbox since word started getting around.

“I’m a small guy, I don’t have the time or money or the energy to fight this big organization PETA,” Santana tells Patch. “If I wanted the headache, I could go against them and serve it. To be honest with you, I did it just to spark a debate. But it’s really not worth it to fight. I guess it’s not a free country after all.”

Santana could have been fined up to $1,000 a day for violating the ban if he had kept serving the dish.

Foie gras is a specially-prepared duck liver. Activists have said that the ducks are treated inhumanely while being fattened for slaughter, since the animals are force-fed through tubes, a method known as gavage, which has been traced back 2,500 years to ancient Egypt.

“It’s very cruel,” Dina Kourda of the San Diego-based Animal Protection & Rescue League told Patch last year prior to the ban. “It’s severe force-feeding with metal pipes. Ducks have their organs lacerated and their bones broken, which leads to infections. It’s as if you were taking 30 pounds of pre-cooked pasta and force-feeding it to a 150-pound person every day.”