Sometimes, one of the best things about Showtime's series "Billions" is the glimpse you get into the way the 1 percent spend their money. That was the case on the April 29 episode "The Third Ortolan," when billionaire hedge-fund boss Bobby "Axe" Axelrod (Damian Lewis) and his Axe Capital COO Mike "Wags" Wagner (David Costabile) ate a bird so rare it's illegal to consume — only the richest, most connected people on earth get to experience it. Sitting with napkins over their heads (to savor the aromas, or as tradition goes, to hide your shame from God), Axelrod and Wagner, joined by star chef Wylie Dufresne (playing himself), dine on the tiny rare songbird, the ortolan.

"I don't know about you but I just had a religious experience," Wagner says, after popping the bite-sized fowl into his mouth whole. "At the climax I felt the crack of its little rib cage, then the hot juices rushing out, down my gullet. Sublime." In real life, the ortolan is actually a thing — it is indeed the rarest of delicacies, "the gastronomic equivalent of a visitation from the holy grail," according to The New York Times.

"It is enveloped in fat that tastes subtly like hazelnut," French chef Michel Guérard told the paper in 2014, "and to eat the flesh, the fat and its little bones hot, all together, is like being taken to another dimension." The fragile songbird from France, which weighs less than an ounce and is about the size of your thumb, was served exclusively to royalty and rich gourmands until it became illegal in 1999. The procedure for preparing ortolan has long been controversial. They are kept in darkness for weeks or are blinded, which causes the bird to gorge on grains and grapes and become fat, the key ingredient to its decadence when cooked. The birds are then thrown alive into a vat of Armagnac brandy (which both drowns and marinades them), then roasted. Ortolans are meant to be eaten feet-first and whole, except for the beak, according to the Times.

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