By Lebo Mogashoa
June 5th, 2008
I have never been the best meat eater out there. So you can imagine my enthusiasm when I heard these magic words, "Sir, would you like some crocodile?"
Any steak I eat has to be super dead. Any hint of red or pink and I'll probably swoon. And chicken is best when it's breast. Anything else tends to taste too chicken-like.
"Uhm, sure croc is fine," I replied.
The fateful question was casually thrown at a tasting dinner. The Arabella Western Cape Hotel and Spa threw their African Bush Dinner for its employees and a few media carnivores, to test out the new menu options.
At first I thought it was a joke. People do eat crocodile, that much I know. But I thought they were a culinary crowd quite on the down low. With a code name. Or at the very least a fancier moniker for the beast. You wouldn't ask someone if they wanted roe, caviar you'd say.
Trying to come across as worldly and game, I took the bait. You know how tasting anything foreign to your palate always goes back to chicken? Well, not crocodile.
Some people have described the taste as "chicken-crab". I don't think so. It's slightly fishy, with a firmer texture.
The pièce de résistance is a thick juicy layer of fat that comes with the meat. Apparently adipose layer moistens the chewy bit. It was all too much for my chicken breast and tofu palate.
What does eland even look like?
Next up it was eland. Could no one find the beef or what? It was all pink inside. Just the way I hate my steak. I dug in, apprehensively. Verdict? It was better than I expected. Better than my usual dead to the maximum beef. It was so good I could have asked for more had I not known we were getting decadent desserts.
Big bird tastes good
But before that I had another wild meat to violate my palate with. Although after the eland I was starting to see the "violation" as ravishment. I was proved right when the next option on the giant skewer turned out to be ostrich.
It's not uncommon to see this big bird as a healthier option to beef or lamb at supermarkets these days. But even after numerous friendly recommendations I still couldn't erase images of the giant neck and the endless feathers. Besides, for a bird, ostrich meat always looked too bovine to me.
Oxen in colour or not, it was delicious. It was beefy in taste but with the tenderness of chicken. Definitely the best wild meat of the evening.
By the time the usual suspects (chicken, beef, and lamb) arrived I was ready for dessert and perhaps more ostrich?
If you want to read more about strange food, see what we've tried in the past or visit for the usual suspects.
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