And sure enough, the next day I got a press release for Frontier’s llama dinner next Wednesday. It’s the latest in the series of whole-animal dinners chef Brian Jupiter’s been doing at the West Town tavern and beer garden since it opened in 2011. Reader food writer Mike Sula wrote about Jupiter’s game focus shortly after Frontier opened, but the meats he wrote about then—rabbit, elk, wild boar—seem downright tame next to some of what Jupiter’s served in the two years since, such as camel, beaver, python, and most famously, whole alligator.
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I ask him if he’s ever had protests over the exotic animals he’s serving and he says no, but when I bring up one particular animal that is farm raised in the upper midwest but has also been the subject of a proposed Illinois ban—lion—he acknowledges sensitivity about the idea of serving it. “Even when we served bear, some people were freaked out by it. But a few other places started serving it shortly after,” he notes.
