PARIS — The menu at Les Prés d’Eugénie, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in the bucolic Landes region of southwest France, reads like a decadent litany of the terroir: truffle blini in a silky galette; toasted pigs’ feet with smoked eel; verveine soufflé scented with citronnelle.
巴黎——米其林三星餐馆欧也尼草原(Les Prés d’Eugénie)位于法国西南部田园诗般的朗德省，这里的菜单读上去好像一段关于风土条件(terroir)的享乐祷文：松露薄煎饼配丝滑的格雷派饼、烤猪蹄配烟熏鳗鱼、柠檬草口味的马鞭草苏芙蕾。

But the chef, Michel Guérard, says that one essential dish is missing: the ortolan, a tiny songbird that gourmands, including former President François Mitterrand, used to covet, consuming the head, bones and body in a single, steaming mouthful, while covering their faces with a white napkin to conceal the act.
但是大厨米凯尔·居埃赫(Michel Guérard)说，餐厅的一道重要菜肴没有写在菜单上，那就是圃鹀，一种会唱歌的小鸟，包括法国前总统弗朗索瓦·密特朗(François Mitterrand)在内的老饕们觊觎着将它连头带骨，整个身体一口吞下去，与此同时为了掩饰，还要用白色餐布挡住脸。
Now, Mr. Guérard and three other celebrity chefs who hail from southwest France — Alain Ducasse, Jean Coussau and Alain Dutournier — are trying to engineer a public comeback for the ortolan, an overhunted species that France banished from restaurant menus in 1999. If they get their way, the forbidden food will be legally offered to napkin-wearing diners at restaurants in Landes for one weekend a year — the gastronomic equivalent of a visitation from the holy grail.
1999年，法国禁止餐厅将这个遭受过度捕猎的物种列入菜单，如今，居埃赫和其他三位享誉法国西南部的名厨——阿兰·杜卡斯(Alain Ducasse)、让·库索(Jean Coussau)和阿兰·杜都尔涅(Alain Dutournier)——却在筹划让它重返公众视野。如果他们成功了，每年中将会有一个周末，朗德省的餐厅中那些头顶餐巾的食客将可以合法地享用这种禁忌的食品，这无疑相当于到此地旅游的美食圣杯。
“The bird is absolutely delicious,” said Mr. Guérard, who recalled preparing ortolans for Mitterrand and his successor, Jacques Chirac, back when it was legal. (Mitterrand was said to linger over two ortolans in his last supper before his death in 1996, also consuming three dozen oysters, foie gras and capon.)
“这种鸟儿绝对美味，”居埃赫说，他回忆自己曾为密特朗及其继任者雅克·希拉克准备圃鹀菜肴，当时这还是合法的（据说密特朗在1996年去世前的最后一顿晚餐就是细细品尝了两只圃鹀，还吃了三打牡蛎、鹅肝和阉鸡）。
“It is enveloped in fat that tastes subtly like hazelnut,” Mr. Guérard said, “and to eat the flesh, the fat and its little bones hot, all together, is like being taken to another dimension.”
“它被包裹在肥油之中，有榛仁的微妙口味，”居埃赫说，“趁热一口吃下肉质、油脂和细小的骨头，感觉就像进入了另一个空间。”
But the campaign has provoked environmentalists, who accuse the chefs of engaging in a publicity stunt to promote what they say is an archaic custom that will further endanger the bird, and that treats the ortolan inhumanely before it is killed.
但环保者们对这些大厨们的努力感到愤怒，谴责他们试图恢复这种会进一步危害圃鹀生存的所谓古老传统，其实是一种公关噱头，而且在宰杀圃鹀之前对它们很不人道。
“These chefs are totally backward; they are not living in the 21st century,” said Allain Bougrain Dubourg, the president of France’s Birds Protection League. “They aren’t doing this for gastronomy. It’s all about raising their profile.”
“这些大厨完全是在搞倒退，他们不是生活在21世纪，”法国鸟类保护联盟的主席阿兰·布格安·杜博尔(Allain Bougrain Dubourg)说。“他们做这种事不是因为美食，而是想树立自己的形象。”
Mr. Ducasse, who has several restaurants around the world, had already alarmed animal-rights activists in New York City when he served about 20 ortolans during a 1995 dinner at Le Cirque that grabbed tabloid headlines.
杜卡斯在全世界拥有数家餐馆，1995年，他在纽约的马戏团餐厅做了20道圃鹀，一时成了小报头条，令动物保护活动者们大吃一惊。
Today, Mr. Ducasse and his confreres say their main objective is to revive a culinary tradition that dates to Roman times, when emperors sought out the ortolan’s intoxicating taste, and to pass the savoir-faire to a new generation of cooks. “We want to be able to do this so as not to lose all the beautiful things that make up the history and the DNA of French cooking,” Mr. Guérard said.
如今，杜卡斯和他的同行们说，他们的主要目的是想恢复一种可以追溯到罗马时代的烹饪传统，当时帝王们就热衷于圃鹀迷人的滋味；而且他们还希望能把这种技能留给新一代的厨师们。“我们希望能做到这件事，好让构成法国烹饪的历史与DNA中的美好之物不致流失，”居埃赫说。
The European Union banned the hunting of ortolans and declared them a protected species in 1979 amid concerns about their survival and an outcry from environmentalists. But France waited two decades to codify the measure.
1979年，由于圃鹀的生存状况和环保主义者们的呼声，欧盟禁止猎杀圃鹀，并将其列为保护物种。但20年后，法国才将这一保护条令列入法律。
Still, many people in France continue to capture and eat the birds. Families in Landes would traditionally savor them once a year, “like a bonbon” at the end of a big lunch, eating them in total silence with a glass of Sauternes and the shades drawn, said Mr. Dutournier, a native of Landes and the head chef at Carré des Feuillants in Paris, which has two Michelin stars.
如今，很多法国人仍在捕食、享用这种鸟儿。传统上，朗德省的家庭会每年吃一次圃鹀，是在一顿正式午餐之后享用，在阴影之下，大家静静地品尝，辅以一杯苏恩特白葡萄酒，“就像吃小糖果一样”。杜都尔涅说，他是朗德本地人，是巴黎斐扬餐馆(Carré des Feuillants)的主厨，这是一家米其林二星餐厅。
Wearing the white napkin allows diners to savor the aromas and enjoy some privacy while devouring the bird — or, critics say, hide their indulgence from the eyes of God.
头顶白色餐巾可以让食客们在品尝美味、吞下鸟儿的同时享有一点隐私——或者如批评者们所说，是在上帝面前隐藏自己的放纵。
Eating ortolan is also a surreptitious pleasure beyond France: The author and chef Anthony Bourdain, in his 2010 book, “Medium Raw,” described a secret, late-night meeting of French chefs in a New York restaurant to eat ortolans. “It’s sort of a hot rush of fat, guts, bones, blood and meat, and it’s really delicious,” he told Stephen Colbert in an interview.
在法国，吃圃鹀也是一种偷偷摸摸的享乐：作家兼大厨安东尼·伯尔顿(Anthony Bourdain)在2010年的著作《半熟》(Medium Raw)中描写法国大厨们半夜在纽约的一家餐厅秘密聚会，品尝圃鹀。“就像一股肥油、内脏、骨头与血肉的热流，的确非常美味，”他在一次采访中对斯蒂芬·科尔伯特(Stephen Colbert)说。
Such extravagance can involve an uncomfortable trade-off. Poachers lure the ortolan into ground traps during its migratory flight from Northern Europe to Africa. Mr. Dubourg, the activist, said that because the birds are prized for their fat, they are kept in darkness for 21 days and are sometimes blinded, prompting them to gorge on millet and grapes. Once the ortolan’s fat has tripled in volume, the bird is drowned with Armagnac, plucked, roasted and served hot in its entirety. “Good cuisine cannot be used as an excuse for the condition these animals are kept in,” Mr. Dubourg said.
这样的奢侈同非常令人不适的交易相关。偷猎者在圃鹀从北欧迁徙到非洲的途中，用地上的捕鸟夹诱捕它们。环保主义者杜博尔说，因为这种鸟的肥厚油脂特别美味，偷猎者会把它们在黑暗中饲养21天，有时还会弄瞎它们，让它们饱食大量燕麦和葡萄，以便长膘。等它身上的肥肉长了三倍，就会被浸在阿玛尼亚克白兰地里、拔毛，烤熟，再趁热整个上桌。“美食不能充当这样对待动物的借口，”杜博尔说。
Last month, he led a group of activists into the fields of Landes, where they released scores of trapped ortolans and demanded that poachers be arrested. The police declined to take action, and a scuffle broke out between protesters and trappers.
上个月，他领着一群环保活动家们来到朗德，放飞了几十只被捕猎的圃鹀，并要求逮捕偷猎者。警方拒绝采取行动，抗议者与捕猎者们之间爆发了冲突。
Mr. Dubourg’s group estimates that the ortolan population fell by more than 40 percent between 2001 and 2011. About 30,000 wild ortolans are still being culled illegally in the South of France every summer, while the police look the other way, he added. A single ortolan can fetch up to 150 euros ($189) on the black market.
杜博尔的团体估计，圃鹀的数量在2001年至2011年间减少了40%以上。他补充说，法国南部每年夏天都有三万只野生圃鹀被选择性捕杀。一只圃鹀在黑市上可以卖出150欧元的价格（合189美元）.
Lifting the hunting ban would reduce prices significantly, the chefs argue.
大厨们说，解除捕猎禁令可以显著降低圃鹀价格。
Mr. Coussau, the chef at the two-Michelin-star restaurant Relais de la Poste in southwest France, insisted that the birds were not treated inhumanely, and cited an unpublished Canadian ornithological study indicating that the ortolan population in Northern Europe is around 30 million. “They are hardly endangered,” he said.
库索是法国西南米其林两星级餐厅驿站酒店(Relais de la Poste)的主厨，他说这种鸟儿没有受到不人道的对待，还引用未发表的一项加拿大鸟类学研究，指出圃鹀在北欧的数量约在3000万只。“它们并没有濒危，”他说。
Besides, Mr. Guérard added, he and his fellow chefs are seeking a waiver from the French government to serve ortolan only one weekend a year. But with all of the other problems confronting the nation, they don’t expect quick results.
此外，居埃赫还说，他和其他大厨们正在向法国政府申请一项不强制执行的规定：每年只在一个周末供应用圃鹀做的菜。但这个国家还有各种各样其他问题，他们并不指望很快会有结果。
He said the chefs do not want to wipe out the birds: “We just want to maintain a tradition.”
他说，大厨们不是想灭绝这种鸟儿：“我们只是想保留一项传统。”
Mr. Coussau rebuffed critics who say the ortolan is an unnecessary extravagance. “There are many things that we eat that are not essential to live,” he said. “We could survive on nutritional pills if we had to.”
有人说圃鹀是一种不必要的奢侈，库索断然否定这种观点。“我们吃的很多东西都不是维持生命所必须的，”他说，“如果有必要，我们可以吃营养药片活着。”
“But if we go down that path,” he concluded, “the notion of pleasure will disappear.”
“但如果这样做的话，”他断言“快乐的概念就将不复存在了”。