Baltimore Sun

Jean Poholsky looks forward to dining at Iron Bridge Wine Co. for the upscale ambience as well as for the food.

So when she arrived at the Columbia restaurant for lunch with friends Monday, she was shocked to see glass shards covering a stone walkway that had been spray-painted in red with the words: “Get rid of the foie gras.”

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Owners Steve and Rob Wecker, whose 80-seat roadside restaurant has been named by Baltimore magazine as among the area’s best eateries five times in the six years since it opened, were also struggling to grasp why someone would cause such damage, estimated at $3,300. It went beyond the cost of replacing four shattered windows, sandblasting away the graffiti and switching out the front door locks that were ruined by glue.

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Monday’s incident in Howard County is not isolated, said Juliette Rossant, editor of the online culinary magazine Super Chef.

“There are attacks on restaurants all over the country,” she said.

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Several U.S. cities have enacted bans on selling the dish, and California passed a law banning it in 2012.

Tersiguel’s, a popular upscale French restaurant in Ellicott City, has taken the dish off the menu. Steve Wecker said Iron Bridge patrons complained when he did the same last year.

“We literally had more customers complain that we had taken it off than said ‘Thank you for doing that, and we’ll now support you,’” Wecker said.

The Weckers said that they have received several e-mail complaints about foie gras over the past couple of years. Howard County police are investigating.

The incident will do nothing to force a menu change, the Weckers said. In fact, they said it might have the opposite effect.

“We’re going to have more foie gras,” Rob Wecker said. “We’re thinking about doing a Foie Gras Night, a progressive foie gras dinner for charity in response.”