Moscow falls for the rodent burger
Forget kale and quinoa. This season’s foodie craze in Moscow is homegrown, affordable and full of nutrients. It’s rat.
Well, not quite rat, but nutria, a giant orange-toothed rodent also known as coypu or river rat, and indigenous to southern Russia. The furry, whiskered beast is finding its way on to plates at several Moscow restaurants.
Eating rodents might conjure up images of starving peasants desperate to survive, or Soviet citizens grimly making it through the siege of Leningrad, but 35-year-old chef and restaurateur Takhir Kholikberdiev has other ideas.
He serves nutria burgers, and a range of other rodent-based dishes, in a sleekly designed eatery in the centre of Moscow. The recently opened Krasnodar Bistro, named after the southern Russian city from which Kholikberdiev hails, is marketed at the new breed of middle-class Muscovite with broad culinary horizons, and fits into a recent trend among Moscow restaurants of focusing on highquality local ingredients.
Those who are a little freaked out by the idea of munching on rodent are simply misinformed, says Kholikberdiev.
‘‘It’s a really clean animal; not only is it a herbivore, but it washes all its food before it eats. And it’s very high in omega-3 acids. A lot of doctors and dietitians recommend it.’’
The Bistro nutria burger at Krasnodar is pale, juicy and fairly bland, somewhere between turkey and pork. It comes in a soft bun, with plenty of relish. A generously sized burger costs 550 roubles (NZ$12).
Nutrias multiply at an alarmingly fast rate, making them an easy and cheap animal to farm. In the 1990s, when most Russians lived on the poverty line, people could not afford traditional fur coats made of fox or mink, so nutrias were bred as a cheap substitute. And with all the excess carcasses, people began to eat the meat.
‘‘Every village in Krasnodar region would have 100 or so nutrias, and when you went to stay with your grandparents, they’d always stew one up for you,’’ said Kholikberdiev.
In Moscow, eating nutria used to be unheard of, but that is changing. Rat on the menu takes a little getting used to, however.
The website Afisha, a bible for Moscow hipsters, wrote in its breathless review of Krasnodar Bistro: ‘‘Just to reiterate this: it’s 2016 and you can eat a rat burger just a few hundred metres from the Kremlin!’’
‘‘I have it here and at one of my other restaurants,’’ Kholikberdiev said. ‘‘Other chefs have started to use it here. And now, if you go to the market in Moscow, they might not have nutria available every day, but they’ll get it in for you within a week if you ask.’’
Other nutria delights on offer at Krasnodar Bistro include nutria hotdog, nutria dumplings and nutria wrapped in cabbage leaves.