I have been meaning to get around to eating dog for some time now. I’m fascinated by foods that break cultural taboos, and, as a Briton, eating dog is about as taboo as it gets, but, perhaps because of that, I’ve never quite got around to it.

For, despite dog meat being firmly available in Indonesia, and China, and on the menu in many other countries that we’ve visited, you usually need to go to a special place to find it. A trip to Sulawesi, the K-shaped Indonesian island old folks call Celebes, provided a natural opportunity to answer that burning question: ‘What’s it like eating dog?’

Hiking through Toraja, our guide, Daniel Pasapan, explained that Torajan people, whose old religion forbade them to pollute the earth with dead bodies, “buried” dead cats in a specific type of tree – but when it came to dogs, they just ate them. Which brought us, naturally, to the discussion of eating dogs, and an invitation to do just that once we were finished.

The Torajans, for the record, are relatively conservative eaters by island standards. While the folk of Sulawesi are famous across the archipelago for their love of dog meat, which is sold as “RW” on islands where it’s slightly less acceptable, and can get them into a lot of trouble, the Minahasa people in the north will eat everything from bat and rat to lizard – and even the endangered tarsier.

And, no, since you ask, my love of busting cultural food taboos does NOT extend to eating endangered species. That’s just wrong. Eating individual animals is OK (although there’s a strong case we should all be vegetarian). Contributing to the destruction of a species is not.

On Attitudes to Animals

Anywise, Daniel and I agreed that, once we were back from the river, he’d get some RW from his local RW restaurant, and my son and I could eat with him and his family back at their house.

My spawn, who has chowed down on everything from pigeon heads to grubs and dragonflies with, it has to be said, varying degrees of enjoyment over his lifetime, needed no persuasion to try dog. He was curious, too.

Both of us believe that there’s no reason to avoid eating any specific animal – unless it’s endangered. If you believe that eating meat and wearing leather is OK, then eating any meat is fine.

As I said to Daniel, “Our attitude to food is quite odd in England. We distinguish between working animals and pets.”

In Toraja, where family money is endlessly diverted to their elaborate and gory funeral ceremonies, Daniel was less romantic. “All animals work here,” he said. “We have cats to catch rats and mice, and dogs to guard the home. No pets.”

“But when you tend your buffalo, that can look very affectionate,” I said, referring to a young man I’d seen lovingly washing down his buffalo in the ricefield.

“No,” Daniel said. “They’re animals.” (Toraja, and Sulawesi in general, is no place to visit if you’re sensitive to animal rights.)

The Dog Restaurant and the Dog Pen

I was keen to see the dog restaurant, which, unlike RW outlets in Bali, had no sign advertising what it sold. It was a big, bright, busy affair in the kampung of Sa’dan just outside Rantepao, with a separate kitchen down the road, and looked for all the world like a very popular, perfectly standard Indonesian rumah makan, only with no dishes on display, because everyone was eating the same thing.

In the kitchen, which I visited, there were no hanging corpses. The meat for evening service had already been butchered. Cooked Sulawesi style, it takes a good hour and a half to prepare dog.

There was, however, a pen across the road, where the next day’s dogs were kept ready for butchering. The dogs were curled up, sleeping. Not cramped, although the pen stank. They didn’t seem unhappy, or as if they had any idea of their fate.

I have to say, however, that although I’ve felt affection for rabbits and eaten rabbit without a qualm, I’ve felt more affection for an individual dog, and seeing these individual dogs waiting ready to be served left me feeling…. well, weird.

Not sad. Just as though I were engaged in violation, perhaps how someone brought up as an observant Muslim might feel at looking at a pen of pigs destined for pork that they were about to eat.

There’s no rational basis for these sorts of feelings, of course. Pigs are highly intelligent creatures, and as a culturally Christian Briton I gorge on them without a qualm. Horses have been partners of humanity for millennia, and I’ve felt affection for horses, as well as eaten that without any thought but curiosity. And there’s nothing as cuddly as a baby lamb, or delicious as rack of spring lamb.

However…. Feelings aren’t rational, and this one was there.

So What’s It Like Eating Dog?

And so, to Daniel’s house and dinner. The dog came slow-cooked Sulawesi style, chopped into small pieces, and fried with a lot of chilli, ginger, garlic and Sulawesi spice – hot, but not mouth-burning.

My son showed no difficulty whatsoever in chowing down on the dog, which he pronounced delicious. For me, it was strangely difficult to put that first piece of dog meat in my mouth, a strong taboo reflex. Although, as my son observed, the strongest taboo he felt was the taboo against eating animals that eat meat, and I think that may have been my biggest issue too.

What does dog meat taste like? Cooked Sulawesi-style, it’s delicious. It has a fibrous texture which would be unpleasant, I’d imagine, if it wasn’t cooked for a long, long time but breaks down perfectly with slow cooking, and a rich, dark flavour – like a much more intense, less gamey goat – that paired perfectly with the chilli spice. (I imagine it would also be delicious served as RW gulai, with the Indonesian spicy curry sauce.)

Yet eating dog was difficult for me, despite the pleasure of the taste. It felt… unhygienic, dirty. I couldn’t get past thoughts of dogs eating meat and defecating it out, and the smell of the dog pen.

And, some of the pieces were still on the bone. Picking dog meat up with my hands and chewing the meat off a small, fragile bone – a rib – made me think of the living, running, playing animal in a way that – for example – a lamb chop would not.

Did I have seconds? Yes. It was delicious. Would I eat it again? In cultures where it’s a delicacy, yes. Will I ever be able to eat dog with the ease that I eat beef? I very much doubt it.

Thanks to ALL CHROME for his lovely piece TABOO that I’ve used at the top – it’s on Flickr’s Creative Commons.