Last Updated on April 10, 2025 by Tom Kane

It’s so nice after a hard week to be able to sit down to a nice meal on a Friday evening at one of the many taverners in the Paphos area. Last week it was a meze, a meal designed to incapacitate the participating guests. You can read about the Cyprus meze by clicking here. It’s a series of small dishes that seem to never end, it never fails to please, but it does take a long time to eat.

Last week I noticed something on the menu that caught my eye and made me feel slightly sickly. Rabbit stifado.

Stifado is a traditional Cypriot stew, usually made with beef, octopus, tripe or even chestnuts. However, it can also be made with rabbit.

I’m sorry, but I shall make my feelings as plain as I can. You do not use rabbit as food. Rabbits are actually bunny rabbits. Bunny rabbits are cuddly and are not destined to go in anyone’s stew pot.

I’m a meat eater, I admit it. Yes, I do eat lamb chops and yes, I wish I didn’t. I’ve tried to make myself give up lamb at least, but can’t seem to be able to do so. But the thought of eating a bunny rabbit is plainly wrong in my eyes.

I was brought up on a council estate (that’s housing provided by the local council) in the English East Midlands. Both my parents worked to keep me and my brothers fed and clothed. We did okay. We ate well and my dad had an allotment (again a patch of land provided by the council to grow food) where we all mucked in to grow veg and fruit.

One day, a workmate of my dad’s came along and gave him a brace of rabbits. Not rabbit meat, but two dead rabbits with skins on and peppered with buckshot, from which blood had seeped and dried on the poor animals fur. My dad wasn’t a hunter, despite being a gunnery instructor before WW2 broke out. None of us had ever used a gun and were not hunters.

“All you have to do is skin and gut them. Chop the heads off and the cook the meat in a stew,” the workmate told my dad.

My mother’s response was classic. “Not a hope in hell!”

The poor rabbits hung from the outside toilet door for two days. Eventually my dad plucked up the courage to remove the animals and dispose of them in some other way that didn’t require skinning and gutting.

No, rabbit is not on my list of animals I like to consume, despite being a meat eater. I think the majority of meat eaters have their own foibles surrounding what they will or will not eat. Mine is rabbit and I shudder at the thought.

Copyright © Tom Kane 2024

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