The battle over luxury dining’s most controversial delicacy is intensifying in Boston and throughout the Northeast.
Foie gras, the French dish made with fattened duck or goose liver, has spurred protests outside Boston restaurants including Pammy’s and Asta in recent months, as animal-rights advocates implore chefs to stop serving what they believe is an inhumane ingredient. Last May, Brookline became the first municipality in Massachusetts to prohibit foie gras, enforcing a penalty of $300 for each day it’s for sale. Meanwhile, a March court ruling means that New York City could soon ban the food, following the example of California, where foie gras has been illegal for several years.
But chefs who serve foie gras say it has deep culinary roots and believe they deserve the right to choose what they serve. Even as the movement to ban foie gras progresses in parts of the US, the UK government recently reneged on promises to ban foie gras imports in order to facilitate a trade deal with the EU.
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French cuisine lovers prize foie gras because the fattened goose or duck liver creates a rich taste and smooth texture, and it’s a staple of Boston’s high-end restaurants. Animal-rights advocates object to it because it’s made by force feeding the animals through a tube to engorge the liver, a practice that some consider cruel.
Ryan Cotter, chef de cuisine at Deuxave restaurant, plates foie gras.Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
On a cold night in late November, Matthew Woodstone was enjoying dinner with a friend at Pammy’s, a locally owned, Italian-inspired restaurant in Central Square with a regularly changing prix fixe menu that sometimes includes foie gras. Sitting at the communal table, the duo split a kale salad and a few fish dishes while enjoying the flickering fireplace and the ambient music. Only the occasional flashes of light and bangs on the windows reminded them that there was a protest against foie gras going on directly outside the restaurant.
“It was this sort of dystopian experience,” said Woodstone. “Pammy’s is so elegant inside and so dimly lit and you’re having a nice glass of wine, and then outside the protesters have huge signs that they’re raising up and banging on the glass, and they’ve got their flashing lights and cameras. There was a tension between those two experiences.”
That tension lasted two weeks, with protesters active outside the restaurant for seven days during that period. (The protest organizers claim that Pammy’s agreed to stop serving foie gras. Pammy’s declined to comment for this story.)
For the last six weeks, the Boston Animal Advocates group has been protesting most weekends outside New American tasting-menu-centric restaurant Asta in the Back Bay, said chef and co-owner Alex Crabb.
“It’s odd that they’re targeting us,” said Crabb, who notes that Asta has served a completely vegan menu every year for the month of January since 2020. “I’m the plant-based guy. What better way than serving a vegan menu for a full month to move that conversation forward?”
That, said Jacob, a volunteer for Boston Animal Advocates who requested to be referred to by his first name because he feared retaliation from the agricultural industry, is precisely why the group chose Asta.
Workers process duck carcasses at Hudson Valley Farms in New York, which provides foie gras to some high-end Boston restaurants. Desiree Rios/The New York Times
“We saw that they have a rotating tasting menu that changes fairly often,” said Jacob, noting that foie gras is not consistently included. “It does not seem like a staple for them and it would be an easy dish for them to not include anymore.”
Crabb said Asta has not lost significant business because of the protest and has no plans to stop using foie gras.
Brian Piccini, owner of French restaurant Deuxave on Commonwealth Avenue, which has not been targeted by protests, explained the use of foie gras. Deuxave serves the dish with almond dacquoise, mascarpone, compressed rhubarb, citrus almond butter, and basil. Piccini has been sourcing from the same producer, New York’s Hudson Valley Farms, for years.
“Foie gras has a deep and meaningful place in French culinary history and that is why it has a place on our menu,” Piccini said. “We understand that people feel strongly about this ingredient and we respect that. These are important conversations and the food world is better for having them. We cook with intention, and we believe that honoring a culinary tradition means doing it responsibly.”
Asta and Pammy’s also sourced their foie gras from Hudson Valley Farms, a distributor often cited as an ethical foie gras resource. Hudson Valley’s website says the farm ducks live cage free and that the feeding process is not harmful to them.
“I have heard that term thrown around in my research,” said Jacob about ethical foie gras. He believes farms would have to be assessed individually. “From what I’ve seen from different organizations, it’s a ‘humane washing’ technique, similar to green washing in the environmental space. Humane washing makes products seem more ethical or humane than it really is.”
Marcus Henley, vice president of Hudson Valley Farms, with ducks on the farm in Ferndale, N.Y.Desiree Rios/The New York Times
The local animal rights group Chainsaw Boston has led many campaigns to urge hotels and restaurants, including Pammy’s, to stop serving the delicacy. It often collaborates with national organizations including the Duck Alliance and Animal Activism Collective, and protests fur and caged chickens as well.
Chainsaw Boston was part of a national effort in August to oppose the use of foie gras by Omni Hotels, staging protests primarily at the Omni Parker House and the Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport.
The group considers a campaign successful when a restaurant or company agrees in writing not to serve foie gras, said Percy Gouldstone, one of the organization’s informal leaders. He claims it received that written statement from both Pammy’s and the Omni.
The group’s strategy, an approach known as a “pressure campaign,” ultimately involves blasting noise, lights, and other disruptions until the business pledges to not serve foie gras. But according to Gouldstone, the process always starts with a friendly email.
“We ask nicely first,” said Gouldstone. “Everything you see is an escalation of them refusing our initial ask.”
Foie gras, seen here at Deuxave restaurant in Boston, is made from the fattened liver of a goose or duck.Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
Chainsaw did not share its email exchange with Pammy’s with the Boston Globe, but Gouldstone claims that the message informed the restaurant that the protesters would be coming and asked them to commit to stop serving foie gras. Crabb confirmed that Boston Animal Advocates sent a similar e-mail to Asta prior to its protests. In both cases, when an agreement couldn’t be reached, the protests began.
In its emails, Chainsaw will point to past protests as an example of the intense disruption the group will cause if its request isn’t met. Gouldstone said the group has won a number of victories through email alone, including from Trouquet on South, which he said agreed to stop serving foie gras after an email exchange. (Troquet did not respond to a request for comment.)
“I think they can look scary from the outside,” Gouldstone said of the protests, “but everything we’re doing is completely legal.”
But at Pammy’s last fall, the experience of the protests read differently to the restaurantgoers and staff who were being yelled at. Video footage on the Chainsaw Boston Instagram account shows protesters going into the restaurant and speaking to co-owner Pam Willis directly. A police report filed on Nov. 20 notes that the restaurant’s manager “reported they had been physically assaulted by a protester.” (Gouldstone claims the protester accidentally stepped on the back of the manager’s shoe.)
Although Woodstone, the diner, said his experience was largely unimpacted by the protests and that Pammy’s had a full house on the weeknight he visited, he said the activists screamed intensely through bullhorns as he left the restaurant. His dining companion, who was wearing a faux fur coat, bore the brunt of it.
“Anyone who’s going to use the First Amendment and try to make the world a better place, I’m all about that, especially while people are having their voices silenced these days,” said Woodstone. “These ones, at least on that particular evening, were definitely going the route of scaring people straight. You know, they were pretty aggressive.”
Chainsaw Boston has been quiet on the foie gras front since the Pammy’s protest, but Gouldstone said its work isn’t over.
“We are driven, we are passionate, we are literally relentless. We care so much about this issue,” he said. “I don’t exactly know what’s on the docket, but I can’t wait to see what place will next drop foie gras.”
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