Opinion Piece ; Cecil the Lion & The Hawksmoor

White man kills black single parent sparking outrage amongst keyboard moralists

A once magnificent beast. Murdered. Butchered. Displayed as an object of human enjoyment. The 48 day aged prime rump from the Hawksmoor’s spitalfields branch is a triumph.

Due to my having to write for this column always clashing with my not wanting to write for this column, I have decided to make my life easier by coupling this weeks restaurant review with my take on the heinous taking of a lions life, Cecil, by American dentist Walter Palma. I intend to address this in short order, but for now lets keep our cross-hairs firmly on my evening meal.  
Executive chef Ty McMullen, formerly of 5^th & Below on White Hart Lane,  has adjusted the side dishes for the upcoming autumn season to accompany its already renowned cuts.  And with a couple of weeks still to go until the beginning of September, The Truth Bar has kindly been given the green light for early access to the autumn shake up.  Summer  favourites such as Heritage tomatoes with basil oil have given way to a medley of root veg, and in the place of salsas? imaginative chutneys are taking up the mantle of complementing your carne.

However, as much as the deep notes of sweet celeriac try to comfort me, my mood is instead soured by thoughts of Cecil. Cecil, a striking alpha male from Zimbabwe was, according to western (code for trusted) media outlets, a firm local favourite among the indigenous peoples. Peoples who would no doubt cite, if The Truth Bar had the budget/desire to talk to them, the dignified way in which he lived his life of eating, killing, fucking and pooping. A noble existence indeed. But last week this noble existence was cut short by selfish healthcare provider Walter Palma...

BANG! My excellent waitress for the evening, Tami, rouses me from my mourning.  The sound of lamb cutlets hitting the polished wooden table ring out like a gun shot. And wow! What cutlets!

superb

Cooked sous-vide and finished on the grill, they evoke all the right memories from late summer evening BBQ’s, the dish of the night by a country mile. Within in minutes Tami is back to take my plates away and as I decide on pudding, thoughts turn back to Cecil and more pressingly, the fate of his assassin…

There is talk, with sustained support from groups such as P.E.T.A, for Walter Palma to be extradited and tried in the courts human rights stickler Robert Mugabe. Calls for extradition have gained traction in recent days with the popular twitter movement “#BlackLivesMatter” taking a break from ending police officer’s careers to publicly back black single parent Cecil. Spokeswoman Tracy Jackson offered this compelling rationale; "Cecil was from Zimbabwe, therefore he was black, and black lives matter”[i]. Palma has since gone into hiding, prompting attention to be diverted to a far more alarming development; the destiny of Cecil’s cubs. 

Pervert Jericho

In the lion kingdom, when the alpha male dies or is killed, the position is assumed by the next most impressive male, in this case Cecil’s brother Jericho, who is obliged by lion law to slaughter any young left behind to appear sexier to the females in the pack.  Jericho, a known sexual deviant, has decided to keep the cubs as sexual slaves in a sickening act of disregard for big cat protocol.  It seems the phenomenon of the creepy uncle extends well beyond the human race, thus sentencing the cubs to a fate worse than death.

I forgo dessert as thoughts of lion molestation have by this point vanquished my appetite,  but my experience has thus far been positive, The Hawksmoor will continue to deliver as the nights roll in and we enter the winter months. I hope we can all honour Cecil’s legacy by finding comfort in this, I have.

Charles Worrall

[i] – we realise that not all lions from Zimbabwe identify as black and not all non-negro lions identify as so.