It seems most countries have a coat of arms, usually with animals or shapes or other weird imagery that have alleged historical significance. Anyway, when most people visit a new country, they respect that coat of arms…me, however, I eat their coat of arms.

(Kangaroo on the left, emu on the right.)

Australia is home to many animals not seen in the US, and Cairns has several restaurants that serve their meat. So our first order of business in this city was to find a place serving such modern Australian cuisine, which brought us to the elegant Ochre Restaurant. Here we ate kangaroo, emu, and then crocodile to finish it off.

From L to R: sampler plate with thinly-sliced raw emu (bottom right of plate), spicy peppered crocodile with prawns, and kangaroo sirloins with bok choy.

How was it? Kangaroo meat was almost indistinguishable from beef. Emu, on the other hand, was a very lean red meat with a gamey taste, which seemed pretty unusual for a bird. And crocodile tasted just like a thick, chewy white fish. Everything tasted great, and I’d definitely come back for the crocodile. The most surprising learning point of the evening? Learning that the emu is not like a cow (what I originally thought), but rather a bird.