Giddy up, horse meat is coming to Queens! After what seems like ages (or maybe just a year and some change) much-loved but short-lived Canadian Long Island City diner M. Wells is coming back to us with this week’s opening of M. Wells Dinette inside MoMA P.S. 1. And hold on to your saddles, because Grub Street has an interesting tidbit to share. Seems Chef Hugue Dufour is planning on having “A sushi display case [that] will serve as Dufour’s horse-tartare—yes, horse—station” where “There’ll be a hand grinder inside covered with meat.“
When we called the restaurant to double check that fact—because, horse meat—we were told that yes, they would eventually be serving horse but that it wasn’t going to be happening just yet. Further, they told us it wasn’t a priority. But still, you say, isn’t it illegal to eat horses? Neigh!
While it is quite hard to get horse meat in the States—especially after a now-over 2007 congressional ban on funding for the inspection of horse meat closed the last horse slaughterhouse here—it isn’t actually verboten. Which is a good thing because having eaten viande chevaline in Canada we can assure you, gentle readers, that the meat tastes good. Really good, actually. Certainly better than rat!
Still, the idea of people eating horse flesh in the Big Apple is, no question, going to get some serious flack from the PETA-types and support from foodiots. So where will M. Wells Dinette be getting its horse flesh from? They say the horses will be American horses slaughtered in Canada (as there are no horse slaughterhouses left in the States). And they’ll be careful not to go through New Jersey, as just last week New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie signed into law a bill that made slaughtering horses for human consumption illegal in the Garden State—as well as transporting horses through the state for the same purposes.
Anyway, M. Wells Dinette opens September 27 and will be open from noon till 6 p.m. on weekdays, and from 10 a.m. on the weekends (for brunch). No word on when the equestrian eating begins.
22-25 Jackson Ave. // 718-786-1800.
