Should have been serving road kill

I’m a big fan of the restaurant review site Yelp.

It’s nice to get a heads up before you order dinner in a strange place. Thanks to Yelp I’ve enjoyed some exceptional dining experiences -- the Hawiiana Cafe in Honolulu, and the Girl and the Goat in Chicago spring to mind.

So when I read that the owners of the Red Lotus in West Yellowstone had been busted by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks for illegally buying animal parts, I Yelped them to check out what customers were saying.

I cook a lot of wild game. I’m always looking for new recipes, and I love Asian cuisine.

Unfortunately it appears none of the illegal meat and fish reached customers. Restaurant owner Herman Chan claims the pheasants, fish and bear meat was only fed to employees and tour guides.

And according to the Yelp reviews I read, the Red Lotus could have used some wild game. A lot of customers complained that meat was scarce in the dishes they ordered.

“Mongolian beef was almost all onions,” one wrote.

“Kung Pao chicken my foot.” said another. “I think the chef mistook celery for chicken.”

I have a friend who used to trade wild mallards for Chinese food at a restaurant in Billings. He’d drop off half a dozen freshly killed ducks for an order of orange peel beef to go.

Where those ducks ended up is anybody’s guess, but I suspect the restaurant owner kept them for himself. Mallard certainly has better flavor than commercially raised chicken.

It seems the help at Red Lotus was eating better than the customers. While tourists in the dining room were struggling to down their food, (“We ordered three dishes and all of them tasted like sock,” wrote one reviewer.) the kitchen staff was feasting on pheasant and trout, with a side of bear gall bladders to fuel their libido.

Chan, who claimed he didn’t know that buying wild game was illegal, was fined $1,500 and lost his hunting, fishing trapping privileges in Montana for six years.

The backlash from the bust will probably cost him much more.

“Boycott!” one reviewer wrote. “Selling disgusting and illegally obtained animal parts ... lousy food as well.”

“Don’t eat here,” wrote another. “Caught with illegal meat.”

Apparently Chan is unaware of Montana’s new road kill law. He could have applied for a salvage permit from FWP and picked up a plethora of wild meat for free. It’s already seasoned and contains no MSG.

Parker Heinlein is at

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