From Cracked:
Origin:
France
What's so Bad About it?
An ortolan bird is about six inches long and weighs just four ounces. It's olive green and yellow, with a touch of ruby here and there. Most people who look at them immediately want to keep ortolans as pets and give them funny un-bird like names, such as Jerry or Ginger.
The recipe for ortolan is this: Capture the bird in the wild, blind it using a pair of pincers, stick it in a tight cage so it can't move, keep it on a diet of millet, grapes and figs until it reaches two to four times its normal size, and then drown it in a snifter of Armagnac. We are still undecided if the last part makes this whole dish gruesome or totally ****** sweet.
It Gets Worse:
The secret to enjoying Ortolan is in the way you eat it. After roasting the bird for six to eight minutes, you cover your face with a napkin, place the whole bird inside your mouth, with only it's head and beak sticking out... and bite down.
The head falls into the napkin, while you slowly bite through Jerry's tiny bones, tiny muscles and even tinier innards. The finale comes when you bite through its lungs and stomach, releasing pockets of brandy into your mouth. The covering your face with a napkin part is said to have been started by a priest, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who did it to hide his gluttony from God. Though we'd think it probably also kept him from getting kicked out of multiple restaurants.