Brooklyn artist Laura Ginn serves braised RATS to diners at $100 a plate

Twenty very brave New York City diners paid $100-a-head to eat a gourmet meal made from RATS, no, not the rats you see running around the city.  These came from a laboratory.

The idea to serve rats to willing diners was the brain child of Brooklyn artist Laura Ginn and she got Chef Yuri Hart to go along with the idea.

The feast was part of Gin’s urban self-sufficiency entitled “Tomorrow We Will Feast on What We Catch.”

Before the daring diners sat down to eat the two meals, an appetizer of rat and port pate followed by an entrée of braised rat, they each had to sign a disclaimer saying they would not sue the artist or the chef if they got sick or worse, die.

Ginn bought 75 rats that were bred for medical testing in a clean and safe facility in California for the meal.  Before serving the vermin to the diners, Ginn and her chef tasted the meals to make sure they were flavorful.

Some diners said the rats, which were served with California chardonnay and Spanish Grenache in Ginn’s Lower East Side studio, had the flavor and consistency of beef.

They said the heads were removed but the limbs were still on.

Wearing a dress made from 300-rat-skins, Ginn, who broke her 16 years of vegetarianism to eat the rodent meal, told her diners that the meal was designed to take people out of their city-inspired comfort zone.

In a video posted on Kickstarter she said “I am hoping to give people the experience of pushing their boundaries.”

She went on to say “I’ve spent the past-year-and-a-half working on a new project exploring self-sufficiency in an urban environment.”

There are no reports of anyone getting sick from the meal.