On 27 March, Michael Hunter stepped out of the kitchen at Antler Kitchen and Bar, the downtown Toronto restaurant which he co-owns, wearing an apron and wielding the hind leg of a deer and a carving knife.

At the front window, Hunter, a chef, had improvised a makeshift butcher’s table – a cherry-coloured cutting board atop a table ordinarily reserved for diners. Then, cool and methodical, Hunter proceeded to slice up the slab of meat right in front of the dozen or so vegan activists protesting outside.

In December, Antler caught the attention of vegan activists when an employee scribbled “Venison is the new kale” on an outdoor sandwich board. Activists began staging weekly protests, holding signs saying: “Take Death Off the Dinner Table” and “Your Food Had a Face”.

When the protests began affecting business, Hunter retaliated by carving up the deer leg.



“The owner, a hunter, is smiling,” scoffed Len Goldberg, one of the activists, as he filmed the action and broadcast it live to his Facebook page. “He’s rejoicing in the dismembering of an animal!” Goldberg’s video – posted under the title “RESTAURANT OWNER TAUNTS US by DISMEMBERING a DEER’S LEG in VIEW of OUR PROTEST” – swiftly went viral.

Hunter’s counter-protest was quickly picked up by Canadian and international news outlets and has sparked a food debate in the country.



Marni Ugar, the activist who planned the original protest, insists the whole incident has been sensationalized by media that saw outraged vegans as irresistible fodder for news.

Ugar says she and her fellow activists were not as appalled as a number of local headlines made them out to be. “Everyone thinks the vegans were freaking out. We weren’t,” she says.

“I go to vigils at slaughterhouses,” Ugar says. “I’ve seen so much worse. Chickens and cows en route to slaughter, missing limbs, alive. The deer, at least, was no longer suffering.”

Hunter felt he had no choice but to respond to the activists that March evening. The restaurant highlights seasonal, local and wild foods, and steers clear of factory farming. Its fare – wild boar minced venison, bison steak and duck-heart yakitori – is designed to appeal to food-conscious carnivores.

“I dreamed my whole life of opening Antler and it exists today as a small, local restaurant specializing in regional Canadian cuisine,” he told me last weekend, a few days after another protest outside the restaurant. “A group of protesters threatened that business, and my response, like any other business owner, was to defend it.”

Hunter knew his actions might have consequences, but he says he “could not have imagined the level of support” he has gotten for taking a stand. The restaurant has “received phone calls, emails, and even donations from people across the city” and heard from people in the hospitality industry around the world.

Marin Ugar, a vegan protester in Toronto. Photograph: Jeremy Gilbert

Ugar, initially provoked by the kale comment, says she decided to target Antler because it’s in her neighborhood and she saw it as a viable opportunity for dialogue. She says it wasn’t in her interest to attack a small businessman but to educate the public and help redefine what restaurants like Antler serve.

In the beginning, Ugar’s objective was to sit down with Hunter and make the case for veganism, hoping to persuade him to remove items such as foie gras from his menu and expand the options to include vegetarian and vegan alternatives.

But given the response to Hunter’s counter-protest, her goal now, she says, is to use the media attention to promote veganism.

Hunter, meanwhile, says: “We will not change who we are.” In his opinion, the controversy points to the wider issue of “a divide growing between differing ideologies and frustration that we have not found a way to co-exist peacefully”.

The Black Hoof, one of the city’s most esteemed restaurants, serves many of the kinds of foods that would offend an indignant activist – beef tongue, horse tartare, and of course, foie gras.

For James Santon, the Hoof’s head chef, the major ethical issue when it comes to animal consumption is one of knowledge versus ignorance.

“We’ve all seen the documentaries on Netflix about industrial farming with the cows on conveyors belts sliding into grinders. But if you source your meat ethically – if you have a deep relationship with your food, if you know where it’s coming from, you know who raised it, and you know what it’s been fed and how its life has been – it’s more than okay.”

Santon’s own knowledge of the restaurant’s meat supply runs deep: he not only knows the names of his pig farmers, he knows the names of the pigs.

Santon points out that even foie gras, widely considered the most cruelly produced meat product, can be more ethical than its reputation suggests. The Hoof gets its foie from a farm in Quebec called Rogue River, where, Santon says, “they treat their ducks like gold”.

While they are force-fed, it’s only for two seconds per day, over the last 10 to 12 days of their lives – a total of two minutes after 12 weeks of free-range living. The rest of the time the ducks are looked after and fed every day by the same person. “They’re raised much more ethically than any chicken. It’s more ethical than most other meats.”

Vegan protesters gather outside of the Antler restaurant in Toronto. Photograph: Canadian Press/Rex/Shutterstock

Jen Agg, owner of the Hoof and author of the acclaimed memoir I Hear She’s a Real Bitch, says that activists target foie gras and restaurants that serve it “for the shock value”.

“The idea is not benign,” she says. “If a place serves heart or sweetbreads or foie, those things will click with people totally fine with eating hamburgers. They target these places because it has more of an impact. Words like ‘force-feeding’, they latch on to these things because they sound more cruel.”

If vegan activists protested against her establishment, Agg wouldn’t engage with them. “I don’t think it would make sense to have a conversation with someone who fundamentally thinks we should be a vegan restaurant,” she says.

The considerations of restaurants like Antler and the Hoof, which take pains to source ethically farmed animals, mean little to the animal rights activist who takes an absolutist view.

“It’s a line that cannot be crossed. There is no humane killing. These restaurants remain within the exploitative bubble of human exceptionalism,” says Alex Lockwood, a senior lecturer at the University of Sunderland who specializes in veganism and animal ethics and is himself a vegan.

Ugar complains that her critics keep asking her why she targeted Antler rather than, say, McDonald’s. In her view, there’s no such thing as ethically farmed meat. “No animal wants to die,” she says. “That’s not ethical.”

But other vegans see targeting Antler as counterproductive. “Veganism and Antler offer just two different ways to hack our food system, for people to feel more connected and informed about what they eat. They are not one and the same, but they definitely are not enemies,” writes Sarah Bond on CBC, arguing that the protests have tainted the perception of veganism and simply given Antler a promotional boost.

As Ugar keeps up protests against Antler, Hunter says the restaurant will continue with its “inspired regional cuisine we have always wished to celebrate with the world”.

He says: “It’s business as usual at Antler.”