UPDATE, TUES., JAN. 25, 10:13 A.M.: Never mind. The restaurant has scrapped its Mufasa tacos due to “safety concerns and death threats.”
ORIGINAL ITEM, JAN. 24, 5 P.M.: What is it about Arizona restaurants and lion meat? Last summer, around the time of the World Cup in South Africa, a restaurant in Mesa, Arizona, decided it was a good idea to serve lion-meat burgers to commemorate the event. There was more than a little controversy regarding the source of the Simba meat.
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Now it's a Tucson restaurant's turn, with lion tacos for $8.75 a pop. The owner of Boca Tacos y Tequila,
a Mexican restaurant close to the University of Arizona campus known
for exotic meats, told the Arizona Daily Star they're procuring the
meat from a farm in Perris, Califonia, that raises lions for food.
Interested in being part of the “Circle of Life”? You must
pre-order your African-lion taco by 3 p.m. Feb. 7; it will then be served to you on Feb. 16.
It is not known whether you can get a side of warthog or meerkat.
UPDATE: According to the Arizona Daily Star, the offer has been rescinded due to threats.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.