The ‘Hufulou’ restaurant in Hailin city in Heilongjiang province is located barely one kilometre (less than a mile) from the Hengdaohezi Siberian Tiger Park, home to a species listed as one of the 10 most endangered in the world.

It was offering a dish of stir-fried tiger meat with hot peppers for 800 yuan (98 dollars), and raw tiger meat at 7,000 yuan (863 dollars) a kilogram, the China Daily reported Thursday.

When asked how the restaurant obtained the meat, a waiter reportedly said the owner had good connections within the tiger park and got the meat of dead tigers.

Police subsequently raided the restaurant and the owner confessed the so-called tiger meat was actually donkey meat dressed with tiger urine to give it a “special” flavour.

I used to live near an ethnic restaurant that was raided by inspectors — who determined that the “rabbit” on the menu actually was cat.

Who do you trust?



  1. Ima Fish says:

    Am I the only who initially assumed Apple was suing some restaurant?

  2. Mario Dorion says:

    Wow! The good old “PostScript Tiger”. We hadn’t seen him in a while! This and the “AutoCad Shuttle” are etched in my mind!

    Once again, I just love the visual support for this blog! Great work!

  3. Max Exter says:

    Being married to a vegetarian (vegan), little surprises me anymore. Heck, ordering vegetarian in many asian restaurants seems to just mean that you get more vegetables along with all of the regular good stuff (IE, meat). I don’t think this is on purpose, so much as a translation/maybe cultural thing.

    What bothers me is when they (by which I mean anybody) are deceptive on purpose. Beef broth in MacDonalds fries, chicken broth to flavour my family style bean curd, and damnit if I didn’t order my Siberian Tiger well done! This stuff tastes like piss.

  4. Mike Cannali says:

    Never eat at a Chinese resturant that is next door to an animal hospital

  5. Ima Fish says:

    Max Exter is right! I had a Chinese friend who was second generation American, i.e., her parents lived in China but moved here.

    She worked at a Chinese restaurant and told some horrific stories. My favorite was the time they were cooking an entire deer’s head, fur and all. She had no idea why they were doing that but didn’t have the guts to ask.

  6. Rance Bleester says:

    I like the Peking Moon best, right over in there Berkeley.
    Here’s the link, check out the menu – mostly veg but some
    good meat dishes as well.

  7. MEH says:

    I wonder if most westerners knows that most Chinese eateries suck due to the overuse of msg. …

    Chinese veggie means more ways of making many tofu taste like meat.
    Most of the dishes posssess tons of msg.

  8. meetsy says:

    today’s sf gate had the BEST headline for this story:

    Restaurant’s Ick Du Jour


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