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Let’s face it — no one has time to cook these days. And by the time January rolls around, the usual array of take-out places and restaurants can get yawn- (or nausea-) inducing. But at least one restaurant — Henry’s End in Brooklyn Heights — is taking a stand, thanks to the latest installment of its annual Wild Game Festival. This week, reporter Christie Rizk (whose picture you will find under the entry “foodie” in the dictionary) checked in with Mark Lahm, the restaurant’s owner and chef, about why we should all be eating snake this winter.

Q: Wild game, huh? Sounds, um, yummy.

A: Well, we’ve been doing it for about 20 years now, one of the first restaurants to serve game. We wanted to show off our culinary skills, and have fun at the same time.

Q: Does game tend to be healthier than, say, beef?

A: Much healthier. Ostrich, which is a red meat, has about 90 percent less cholesterol than beef. Buffalo has less than half of the cholesterol of beef and it’s much leaner.

Q: Does that mean you have to cook game differently or can you just slap in on the grill like a steak?

A: No matter how you cook it, the trick is not to overcook game meat because of its low fat content — otherwise it gets tough and leathery.

Q: Where do you get all these exotic meats?

A: We get our antelope from a ranch in Texas. We get our buffalo from another ranch. We get quail from Georgia, and, believe it or not, we get our ostrich from New Jersey.

Q: Is the menu new every year or do you repeat some popular dishes?

A: There are certain items that we do over and over because people just love them. The herb-crusted elk chops are the most popular item — and I don’t change them because when I do, people complain. Turtle soup is also a perennial favorite.

Q: Wait a sec. Aren’t turtles endangered? I mean, haven’t you seen “An Inconvenient Truth?” Do I have to call Al Gore on you?

A: We use snapping turtle, which is not endangered. If anything is on an endangered species or watch list, we would never serve it.

Q: I know you added baby pheasant this year. Deer, baby pheasants, turtles. Do you only serve cute little things?

A: Actually, when we started doing this, we used to do some items just for the shock value. But now I find that I want to do things that people like and that aren’t ridiculously hard to do.

Q: Like what?

A: Rattlesnake. Skinning and boning a rattlesnake is not fun — it’s time consuming and expensive. And believe it or not, it does taste like chicken.

Q: What’s the weirdest request you’ve ever heard?

A: Years ago we had someone who wanted to eat bear and lion. But neither one of those things are particularly good. But with a lot of people, the more exotic it is, the more they want to try it.

Q: Where did you get lion meat?

A: There’s a company in the Midwest that imports it from Africa.

Q: Legally?

A: Of course.

Q: Wait, are you trying to tell me that the king of the jungle isn’t good enough for your kitchen?

A: Well, lion is too gamey and the meat doesn’t really taste that great. I’d rather serve up something that people are going to keep coming back for.

©2007 Community Newspaper Group