The Phylum Feast: An unusual way to celebrate Darwin Day

If you're fortunate enough to be in Scotland this February, you might want to visit Stravaigin, a restaurant in Glasgow that's celebrating a dead man's birthday with a very unusual dinner. Here's what's on the menu:

Stravaigin’s Phylum Feast
Thursday 23rd February

Join us in an opposable thumbs up to Darwin Day { Feb 12th }
Evolutionary meal featuring over 50 flora and fauna species

1.Primordial Soup and Laverbread
{Dulce, ceps, chicken stock, tuna flakes, miso and sprouting beans, seaweed biscuit}

2.Mollusca Salad
{Clams, Squid, Mussels, Octopus, Scallops, Spicy Leaves and Pinenuts}

3.Unctuous Ungulate and Crusted Crustacea
{Mutton and Panko Crusted Langoustine, Beetle Butterbeans and Asian Pickled Garlic}

4.Hunter Gatherer Pie
{Pecan Pie, Blueberry Yoghurt Ice-cream}

*Monkey Gland Martini,Coffee, Tea and Ant After Eights also served

{inc. glass of Cava, Claret and Muscadet sur lie}

Whew! Happy birthday Charles Darwin, but what the heck is a Phylum Feast and where did the idea come from?

Ask a biologist what the single most important idea ever to come out of the biological sciences is and the answer will almost certainly be Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. This idea not only revolutionized biology but has influenced thought in many of the physical sciences as well. It vies with the Theory of Relativity as the best-known and most important scientific idea of all time. Thus it is only natural for people all over the world to celebrate February 12th, the birthday of Charles Darwin.

While tributes to his life and achievements occurred sporadically after his death in 1882, the first large-scale events took place in 1909, the 100th anniversary of his birth. 265 scientists and dignitaries from 167 countries met in Cambridge, England for a tribute and discussion of current discoveries relating to the Theory of Evolution. On February 12th of that year, the New York Academy of Sciences celebrated with a banquet and the unveiling of a bronze bust of Darwin at the American Natural History Museum. The Royal Society of New Zealand held a very successful “Darwin Celebration” as well.

There have been plenty of other tributes since that time though they’ve primarily remained within the academic community. The University of Chicago’s celebration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1959, received extensive press coverage. More recently, Salem State College in Massachusetts has held its own “Darwin Festival” (a term the college has registered as a trademark) every year since 1980. Since 1994, the world humanist community has become increasingly involved in its own tribute, “Darwin Day”. In 2009, the 200th anniversary of his birth, it’s estimated that there were at least 725 Darwin-related events in the United States alone. And every year the numbers grow.

By far the oddest birthday parties will be the so-called Phylum Feasts. These are a kind of potluck dinner where the ingredients come from as many different species (or at least with as much biological diversity) as possible. The real object though, is to have fun. The phylum in the name is a term used in taxonomy, a scientific system for classifying organisms and where they fit in relation to others. Humans, for instance, belong to the phylum Chordata, which includes all vertebrate animals; spiders and crabs belong to the phylum Arthropoda; and so on. The tradition began on a few college campuses starting in the 1970s and has grown in popularity ever since. Interestingly enough, Darwin’s own dietary habits provided the inspiration.

Long before he set off on his famous voyage of discovery with the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin was an eager amateur explorer, roaming the wetlands and countryside first around Edinburgh University and later at Cambridge, in order to gather all kinds of insects and small creatures. His interests were not always limited to collection and classification though. At the age of 22, he and a few friends formed the “Glutton Club,” which was distinguished from other supper clubs by the aim, according to his friend Frederick Watkins, of eating “birds and beasts which were before unknown to the human palate.” The club members enjoyed all manner of odd meats including hawk and bittern but, as Watkins later wrote, “the appetite for strange flesh did not last long” and the club disbanded abruptly after an “indescribable” meal made from an overripe brown owl.

Later, while voyaging with the HMS Beagle, Darwin had the opportunity to once again make gustatory discoveries. With food preservation in the 1830s still a primitive science, shipboard cuisine was mostly limited to things that didn’t rot quickly, such as salt pork and hardtack. As a result, whenever the ship made a landing, obtaining fresh food and water was a priority. Darwin, who collected his animal specimens by net, purchase or gun, made considerable contributions to the ship’s larder. Whatever wasn’t stuffed and sent back to England for study had a good chance of ending up in the pot. In South America, this included creatures such as armadillo, agouti (a rodent), mountain lion and guanaco (a kind of wild llama). In the Galapagos Islands, iguanas and giant tortoises also found their way onto the menu. As with the Glutton Club, this practice eventually led to something of an embarrassment. While hunting for specimens in Chile, Darwin shot what he thought was a juvenile specimen of the American Rhea, a large, flightless bird. Only after the fowl had been cooked and half-eaten did Darwin belatedly realize his dinner was actually a new, smaller species. Fortunately he was able to preserve the uneaten parts, including the head, neck, feathers and skin, and was later gratified to learn that the taxonomist, John Gould, had named the species after him (Rhea darwinii).

With Darwin’s example to spur them on, modern celebrants of the Phylum Feast work very hard to maximize the biodiversity of their dinners. Here’s a sample menu (including taxonomic classes) from a feast cooked up in 1989 by scientists at the Queen Charlotte Museum in British Columbia:

Mammalia: Minke Whale meat
Aves: Smoked Turkey slices
Teleostoma: Pickled Herring
Bivalvia: Mya (clams) from mouth of the Honna River
Gastropoda: commercial escargot
Malacostraca: commercial shrimp
Pteridophyta: commercial fern fiddleheads
Monocots: Onions, rice
Dicots: Pecans, spinach
Fungi: commercial Agaricus (mushrooms)
bacteria: villi (Finnish Longmilk (yogurt))

Phylum Feasts were among the many festivities honoring Darwin’s life and achievements on his 200th birthday in 2009 and will be on many “Darwin Days” to come. Scientists and humanists will aim at creating the most diverse menus to amaze (or maybe assault) the taste-buds and it will be interesting to see what kind of recipes they invent to use them in.

Primordial Soup, anyone?

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