Most of the ostriches being bred in the United States are descendants of South African birds, imported either as eggs or chicks in the 1980s. Back at the source, then, I had my first taste of ostrich later the same day I spotted the birds at the Cape of Good Hope.
I was fortunate enough to be visiting the Steenberg, a magnificent old hotel and vineyard behind Cape Town's Table Mountain. Here, in addition to world-class wines such as a sauvignon blanc reserve and a Bordeaux blend, there is a gorgeous restaurant, Catharina's. Chef Garth Almazan that evening had prepared ostrich, grilled rare and served with an onion-and-red-wine marmalade, alongside ravioli stuffed with shiitake mushrooms, thyme and Parma ham.
Ostriches are foraging animals -- they eat seeds, shrubs and whatever other vegetative matter they can find -- so their meat is sometimes infused with flavors such as wild thyme, lavender and rosemary.
When I complimented him on the ostrich breast he'd prepared, Almazan quickly corrected my mistake -- a commonly made one. "Ostriches don't have breasts," he said. "Even to say `filet' is not technically accurate. What you are really eating is the rump."
That, he said, is the tenderest part of the animal. The legs and neck are tougher and usually are sold to be ground up into ostrich burgers.
Unexpectedly, this conversation led Almazan to suggest that I visit Oudtshoorn, a town that's known as the ostrich capital of South Africa and boasts game farms where the intrepid can take a ride on top of ostriches. "It is like bull-riding in America. The birds are kept in an enclosure. You get loaded onto them," he said. "It's good fun."
Thanks, but no thanks.
When I visited Fossil Farms in New Jersey a few weeks later, I also decided I wasn't brave enough to try raw ostrich served in the style of "hunter's sushi."
Fossil Farms is owned by Todd and Lance Appelbaum, two brothers in their 30s who tasted ostrich for the first time on a skiing trip to Breckenridge, Colo., in 1997. They came back to their home state of New Jersey fired up with a plan to try raising these peculiar creatures themselves. Since then, their company has grown to be the largest breeder and distributor of ostrich meat on the East Coast, and among the top two or three breeders in the United States.
