Owning and working in a restaurant is either a labor of love or a labor of necessity.
For many (esp. immigrants), it’s the latter.
Restaurant business is hard.
Having grown up in the back of restaurant kitchens, I would never wish that on my worst enemy.
I was going to chime in on some thread re: lamb. I’ve never eaten it and the few times I’ve been around it, I wanted to hurl. Conjures up two vivid memories…The first at my future husband’s wealthy sister’s Easter lunch. She brought out a roast lamb, quite proud of herself and I refrained from eating it. I thought I would lose it at the table. The next time was when my spring onion was a toddler and basically only ate meatballs. The restaurant at which we were having lunch only had lamb-containing meatballs. Even B (my meat-eating husband) felt a little weak-in-the-knees by the smell. Yuck. I’ve never understood why folks like lamb so much. Just a rhetorical observation. 
A lot of people have an aversion to lamb if they have tried mutton or imported NZ /Australian lamb first.
Fresh Local lamb does not tend to have that heavy scent.
I think a lot of frozen lamb has fat that has become slightly rancid. I don’t buy frozen NZ or Australian lamb , to avoid that scent.
I cook local lamb around twice a month. It costs about twice as much as beef and 3 times more than pork in Canada.
I am not saying you will like local lamb. If you have an aversion, you have have an aversion.
I don’t think fresh salt marsh lamb from Wales, or local spring lamb from wherever you live , would have that heavy scent or taste you are describing.
For me, it’s rancid walnuts, rancid peanuts and rancid pine nuts that will ruin any dish for me. Rancid pork sausage that’s been frozen, rancid bacon that’s been frozen, occasionally.
I like fresh nuts.
I suspect much of the aversion to lamb will be cultural. Americans are not generally brought up to eat lamb whereas it’s often the meat of choice for we Europeans. I’ve often read on American led food forums of folk describing the flavour as “gamey”. I’ve never really understood that. The supermarket lamb I eat has a mild taste - nothing like the distinct flavours of the venison, pheasant and other game that I buy. I wonder whether when they refer to “gamey”, they are actually meaning “unusual” or “different” or simply “not nice”. Older lambs, of course, have a more assertive flavour and I can fully understand that folk who have been brought up eating the very bland flavour of American beef may find meat tasting so much of itself to be off-putting. FWIW, I rarely order steak when we visit the States - just find the flavour too mild to be really enjoyable. Again, I’m sure that’s a cultural thing for me.
Whilst we do have imported New Zealand lamb readily available in supermarkets, particularly when British lamb is generally out of season, I can search out home grown products readily easily, so always buy British. I can’t recall seeing Australian lamb here but I have occasionally seen it on menus in restaurants in America. Never tried it though. But I have tried Colorado raised lamb and it’s been excellent.
Americans often use the term gamey to describe any dark meat that isn’t beef or pork. It just means it doesn’t taste like what they know. Anything else then tastes like chicken.
Some of the NZ and Australian lamb that gets imported costs 1/3 to 1/2 of what the local quality lamb might cost. As a result, a lot of restaurants use the cheaper imported lamb, which sometimes has the rancid or a heavier scent that puts people who don’t enjoy lamb off.
Of course, lamb is enjoyed by many Canadians who have a British, Irish, Greek, southern Italian, Turkish, or South Asian heritage.
I realize some South Asian immigrants find the lamb taste mild here in Ontario, so it’s possible you may also find the lamb tastes mild in Canada, Harters.
We always have lamb at Easter.
The taste I found I didn’t like, which could be due to what the bird had been eating, was grouse, in the UK. Duck is my favourite poultry, and I like quail, goose and partridge, so it was a surprise to me that I did not like the grouse I ordered.
Thanks for the confirmation. Knowing the fairly low level of game eating in the US (and the UK), I’d doubted whether “gamey” was actually referencing experience of eating game.
I suspect South Asians who find the lamb to be mild, probably have more experience with goat. Similarly, when I visit Spain, there will often be lamb on the menu in the tourist areas. But, go a few miles inland from the tourist costas and you’ll find the same dish uses goat.
By the by, I’ve read reports that suggest that lamb imported to the UK from New Zealand has less environmental impact than British raised lamb. But, of course, that scientific study was sponsored by the NZ sheep farmers trade body.
Goat is difficult to find here.
Some Caribbean, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Greek and halal restaurants and butcher shops offer it, but lamb is much more common in Canada.
That said, Caribbean goat curry is more common than Caribbean lamb curry around here.
Re Environmental impact of NZ lamb
Some NZ or Oz outfits had lambs on board ships, essentially floating meat packing plants, hired non-New Zealanders to do the butchering and meat packing at very low wages, and were discarding the innards overboard. I much rather buy local when I can.
I enjoy lamb. Not sure if it’s related, but the next town north of us is called “Lambtown”, and they raise a lot of lamb. I don’t know if I would call it strongly flavored but you can certainly tell it’s lamb from it’s aroma and flavor. My BIL raised lamb in North Carolina and I enjoyed that as well .
We sometimes get elk and venison from friends who hunt, and of course quail but don’t have much experience with game. Unless bison is game.
My DIL from Turkey does not like lamb, and husband from Jamaica does not like goat.
And here. I might try a search of the local halal butchers attached to the South Asian supermarkets
I know a lot of Greek Canadians who dislike lamb. Some only eat chicken breast souvlaki, avoiding lamb and pork souvlaki. I also know a few Greeks that dislike olives , feta and fresh dill, despite those ingredients being common in many Greek kitchens and restaurants.
I noticed on my last couple visits to see family in Germany, most of my relatives were choosing to eat or serve turkey schnitzel instead of pork or veal schnitzel.
I think the way people choose to eat often doesn’t reflect the stereotypes or traditions
Lamb is a love it or hate it meat around here, so I would ask before serving it to guests at a dinner party where there was one main course . I’d also check re pork or beef as a main course. Chicken and salmon are pretty safe bets, unless there’s an allergy.
Come to think of it, I’ve only prepared lamb for family , and an annual BBQ where we had lamb kabobs as well as chicken wings, pork ribs, beef kabobs as protein. I have made things like Tourtière , bacon- wrapped dates, carnitas, and beef meatballs for parties where I’ve got many people coming, in addition to seafood, wings, cheese, etc,
When I was researching for my book about food during the Great War (“Bully Beef & Biscuits”), mutton was often mentioned but never lamb. This was in official records, mens letters home and butchers adverts in local newspapers. I don’t know if this was then the generic British term for sheep meat or had the same distinction as it does today.
My grandfather’s battalion (and another) was recruited in September 1914 and records remain for the daily food consumption, in the October, of the 2000 men:
Potatoes - 1 ton
Bread - 2500 loaves
Beef - 400 pounds
Mutton - 400 pounds
Boiled hams - 30
Butter (2 hundredweight)
Oatmeal - 200 pounds
Jam & marmalade - 700 pounds
Mixed pickle - 100 jars
Milk - 80 quarts
*together with a large quantity of tea, cheese and cake
I grow corn in the Rio Vista area, have known Julie for decades.
A fishing buddy works at the slaughter house in Dixon.
As a German now I am curious which part of Germany you are visiting as this is definitely not my experience.
While visiting relatives near Neubrandenburg, near Halle, near Aachen and outside Munich.
Maybe it’s just my family. Hard to generalize about the entire population!
One elderly cousin is completely avoiding pork and sausage. But she was married to a Sicilian for 30 years, and might have been influenced by summers in Italy.
I barely order pork or meat when I visit Germany, myself.
Interesting reference here-
The per capita consumption of mutton and goat in the US is quite small. My guess is that its mostly lamb as I rarely see anything else from sheep and the only place I ever find goat is in various ethnic markets. I remember once walking into a halal butcher when they had an entire skinned goat hanging from the ceiling. Way cool I thought. Gonna make some goat roti. I go to the Caribbean a lot. You see a lot of goats there wandering everywhere. I’m in the mood for some goat curry now.
I’m sure that’s why the term “Americans” makes me a bit defensive.
I remember similar hanging in the window of a butchers in Corfu.
I am reminded of the airport in Nevis, where my mom’s family is from. Goats wandered around the airport and my kids asked “is this place civilized?”. I think they might have meant “is there reliable internet?”.
