Menu Changes

Public, Too, Was Dragged to Kangaroo Court

Photo: iStockphoto

It turns out, Eight Mile Creek isn’t the only restaurant that was raided for serving kangaroo. Adam Farmerie tells us that Public had to take kangy off the menu after gun-toting officers of the EPA (yes, the EPA!) paid the Aussie restaurant a surprise visit last August. The investigators told him they’d gotten a complaint about the edible ’roo and revealed that a long-standing law made it illegal to obtain certain “endangered” species, or even harbor their pelts or hides. (The law, says Farmerie, applied to New York but not to New Jersey, where his supplier, Fossil Farms, is located.) Farmerie was shocked to discover that the amount of meat he had in his kitchen and on his books constituted a felony offense, meaning he and his partners at AvroKO, which operates Public, could’ve been whacked with a fine in the thousands of dollars and dragged to jail. In the end, the court mercifully doled out a fine somewhere in the $250 to $500 range. Farmerie said he didn’t have it in him to take it up with the state legislature, but Eight Mile Creek apparently fought for its right to kangy — and we don’t blame them. We’d be hopping mad, too.

Earlier: Eight Mile Creek Fights for the Right to Serve Kangaroo

Public, Too, Was Dragged to Kangaroo Court