A chicken restaurant opening on May 5 in Arnhem, the Netherlands, boasts a particularly remarkable feature. If you want to eat chicken there, you have to go to the

kitchen to hold the animal while it is being slaughtered.

"Do you eat oysters, lobsters, or mussels? Then we find it acceptable that the animal is alive when we buy it. What about meat? Would you buy it if there were only living animals in the supermarket? With Upstick, we are launching the most daring concept of 2023. With this unique experience, you witness the slaughter up close and later hold the feathers yourself," reads the promotional text on the Upstick website.

A visit to this new restaurant goes like this: you order, go to the kitchen with chef and owner Wander Ablas, and hold the animal there while he slaughters it with an electric shock. Then you help pluck the chicken's feathers, after which the animal is cleaned and can be prepared for someone the next day. You get meat that was slaughtered a day earlier because a few more steps need to be taken before it is ready for consumption.

"More aware"

"You're right there," Ablas said in interviews with Dutch newspapers. "And you become more aware of what you're actually eating." For the Dutchman, the unique restaurant visit revolves around sensitizing and eating more consciously because he believes that too much meat is eaten and chickens are slaughtered. "I hope that everyone will be more aware of their own meat tradition at the end of the evening at Upstick."

For a four-course dinner, you pay €38.50 per person at Upstick. Photo by woodley wonderworks, Wikimedia commons.