When the Gold Rush hit California in the mid-19th century, miners swarmed over its hills like humanoid locusts, shearing the land of its vegetation in search of fortune. The newly rich, once established in San Francisco, were equally as ravenous when it came to food, and the opportunity to feed a population that would quadruple in size in 40 years brought immigrants and businessmen like Samuel Charles Coombes to the city long after the initial rush abated.
A serial entrepreneur, Coombes arrived in San Francisco from England in 1888, eager to sell fresh meat to the rapidly developing city. Locally procured red-legged frogs flew off the shelves. Priced at around $4 per dozen ($123 in today’s money), their appeal to the California nouveau riche was no doubt popularized by their association with sophisticated French cuisine — the native amphibian was dubbed “French frog” by unscrupulous dealers.
“As good and better than many gold mines,” boasted Coombes’ 1902 manual on commercial frog farming, a business he got into to keep his shop stocked.
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Live frogs is sold at a San Francisco seafood market in Chinatown. Many people believe live frogs taste better than frozen ones.
“The demand for frogs is proving to be so great, I was obliged to get a staff of men to catch them and also have the frogs shipped to me from all parts of the state,” Coombes wrote.
The hunger for these creatures proved too insatiable, and the stock of native red-legged frogs couldn’t keep up. By the time Coombes jumped into the frog farming business, American bullfrogs from the East Coast were already being imported to supplement the local supply. The first documented import was in 1896, when a frog farm in El Cerrito brought in 36 specimens from Maryland and Florida.
“Farming” in these early cases involved simply gathering up a bunch of bullfrogs and plopping them in a single pond surrounded by primitive enclosures. You didn’t even have to feed them. They often eat their young, essentially producing their own sustainable food supply.
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Bullfrog farms don’t exist in California anymore. Most shut down in the 1930s, but the left-over “merchandise” stuck around. So did California’s appetite for the amphibians. These days, approximately 2 million are imported into the state each year from farms around the world.
In the Bay Area, you’ll most often see bullfrogs at seafood markets or on menus at Chinese restaurants. (While the region’s French bistros have a much smaller presence, you’ll see sautéed frog legs — cuisses de grenouilles — there, too.)
Slippery and plump, with a cooked texture nested between that of chicken and halibut, bullfrog meat rewards the patient eater. Yes, there are bones. Deal with them like you would a peach pit: work around the center to peel off the flesh, centered on the frog’s muscular, Mr. Universe legs.
“Their meat is particularly silken, succulent and delicious,” says cookbook author Fuchsia Dunlop, who has written several essential English-language books on regional Chinese cuisine. “They also have the ‘high grapple factor’ that Chinese people enjoy, which is to say that they are a little fiddly and it’s a kind of game separating bone and meat in the mouth.”
At Z & Y Restaurant, an institution of Sichuan cuisine in San Francisco’s Chinatown, chopped and braised frog legs are intertwined with fierce peppers, spongy seafood mushrooms and cucumbers in a silky broth. Stray pieces of meat — there’s a calf! — might release from the bone and bob about in the gelatin-rich liquid like pale buoys.
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At Easterly, a group of Hunan restaurants in the East Bay, the meaty legs are chopped into juicy, bite-size morsels and stir-fried with pickled red chilies.
Like fish or Dungeness crab, obsessives say that live frog, butchered right before you cook it, has an ideal taste and texture.
San Francisco chef Kathy Fang, whose family owns House of Nanking and Fang in the city, remembers shopping for bullfrogs with her family, watching her parents as they picked prime live specimens at seafood markets.
“Pork and frog were big at our home,” she told me, while beef and chicken were occasional, if not rare at the dinner table. When she was pregnant, Fang ate a lot of frog, which she praised as a good source of protein that’s also low in fat and cholesterol.
In a year or so, however, it could be harder for Fang or anyone else to make bullfrog dishes — at least in California. In December, a series of proposals approved by the state Fish and Game Commission quietly recommended a complete ban on the importation and sale of live bullfrogs.
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Environmentalists and scientists have long decried the devastating impact of American bullfrogs on the state’s ecosystem, with one wildlife expert I spoke to calling them a “plague.” Meanwhile, for decades, frog enthusiasts have successfully pushed back on environmentalists by arguing that a ban would be culturally insensitive to Asian Americans.
For the commission’s proposed ban to ever become law, it will likely demand state officials answer what feels like an impossible question: Do people eat frogs to affirm their cultural identities or simply because they enjoy them?
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With speckled topaz eyes, yellow bellies and gaping, muppet-y mouths, American bullfrogs don’t necessarily look like harbingers of ecological doom. Generally about 2 pounds in size, they float in California’s freshwater ponds and streams like partially deflated green whoopie cushions, filling the air with their booming cries on warm summer nights. Their muscular hind legs are not only delicious, but they’re the key to an incredible jumping ability: The world record is held by a bullfrog named Rosie the Ribiter, who jumped 21 feet and 5¾ inches at the Calaveras County frog jumping contest in 1986.
Unsurprisingly, given their impressive physical attributes, live bullfrogs raised for food can and do escape from captivity. Once loose, a single female frog can populate the wild with 400,000 eggs in her lifetime.
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These hatchlings will compete with native species — and they often win. Each is a potato-size black hole that efficiently Hoovers up any and all small creatures (rodents, gophers, snakes, other frogs, fish, birds, lizards, and more) that’ll fit in its mouth.
What competitors a bullfrog doesn’t eat or out-compete can catch a fatal disease from being in its proximity. Nearly all escaped bullfrogs carry a deadly fungus thanks to crowded conditions in modern frog farms. According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, that disease, chytridomycosis, has been responsible for the extinction of more than 100 species since the 1970s.
For these reasons, the campaign to ban the bullfrog in California stretches back to the 1990s. But it has proven to be an uphill battle, with environmentalists and state regulators facing down pet owners and bullfrog jumping contest fans. The most stalwart opponents of a ban, however, have proved to be those who love to sup on their legs, whether fried, doused in butter sauce or simmered in a spicy Sichuan hot pot.
In 1997, the Fish and Game Commission tried its first crack at a ban, sparking fierce backlash from Asian Americans. Citing the preservation of live markets and restaurants catering to Asian Americans, then-state Assembly Member Mike Honda, D-Santa Clara, authored a bill in 1999 that set up the current system, in which vendors could apply for permits to import bullfrogs. His original legislation tried to bar the Fish and Game Commission from ever banning the importation of those bullfrogs for food, but those clauses were struck on the road to ratification.
Farm-raised imported American bullfrogs wait to be sold at a seafood market in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The California Fish and Game Commission is considering a ban on the import of live bullfrogs into the state.
The commission proposed another ban on the importation of live bullfrogs in 2010. But once again, Asian American state politicians like state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, objected on cultural grounds.
“For over 5,000 years, it has been the practice of both the Chinese community and the Asian American community to consume these particular animals,” Yee said at the time. “They are part of our staple. They are part of our culture. They are part of our heritage.”
Frozen bullfrog would still have been OK under the proposed rules, but the commission was wary that long-dead bullfrog would be seen as inedible by gourmands who’d seek out black market options.
Yee’s efforts succeeded, and live bullfrogs stayed on the menu in California.
It took seven more years for the commission to brave tackling the bullfrog problem again — perhaps, uncoincidentally, only after Yee was out of the picture after being sent to prison for racketeering.
This time, instead of plowing forward with a proposed ban, the commission convened smaller stakeholder groups, including three Asian seafood importers, to discuss ways to mitigate the frogs’ environmental impact and find a healthy compromise. It also assigned a committee to tackle the intriguing question of whether people consume live frogs for cultural identity reasons or mere preference.
It’s a fascinating line of philosophical and ethical questioning for a staid government body that once told a Los Angeles Times reporter that it “doesn’t like getting in the middle of (cultural practices).”
Think about the food that you eat: is it for cultural reasons or because you prefer it? If your aunt’s potato salad was capable of running amok and causing mass extinctions, what would you do?
Trying to answer the question has taken six years and counting. In the meantime, the European Union, facing an invasion, enacted a ban, while California’s bullfrog population has shown no signs of shrinking.
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Wildlife biologist Jeff Alvarez has personally killed thousands of American bullfrogs in the ponds and creeks of Northern California. His company, the Wildlife Project, is hired by land trusts, government agencies and wineries to control the population using a method he euphemistically calls “lethal removal” or shooting as many adult males as possible to erode the population’s reproductive capacity.
Armed with airsoft rifles and flashlights, he and a partner stalk through dark waterways like a pair of assassins, listening for frog calls, a chorus reminiscent of the revving of many tiny motorcycle engines. The pair wave flashlights at the edges of ponds to illuminate the frogs’ eyes, exposing their locations with tell-tale twin pinpricks of light. Alvarez then takes the kill shot to the head.
“I did not kill wildlife until bullfrogs came into the picture,” Alvarez said. “If you’re pro-conservation, you’re gonna have feelings about taking life.”
The knowledge that this practice will help lessen the bullfrogs’ burden on the environment helped the mild-mannered scientist get over it.
There could be 20,000 bullfrogs in a single pond, and it might take several years’ worth of visits to see a change, Alvarez said. Using the rifle method, a two-person team can take out a few hundred in a single night. It’s more humane and efficient than “gigging,” the prevailing practice of snagging the frogs with a multipronged spear, which spooks nearby frogs and might not kill the victim with the first blow. If you’re gigging, Alvarez said, you might only be able to grab 20 to 50 in a night.
In the spirit of not wasting food, he tries to distribute the biggest, healthiest frogs to friends who like to eat them. Even still, he winds up burying most.
“You don’t want to overwhelm somebody with a lot of dead bullfrogs,” he said.
Alvarez has seen some promising results: Native fauna like the red-legged frog are starting to thrive again in areas he’s spent years working on.
But while people like Alvarez might be efficient, making a significant dent in California’s invasive population is too much to ask of even the most seasoned bullfrog terminators.
Said Alvarez: “The ban on importation is gonna be required for the state to get anywhere with this.”
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To arrive at its final recommendation, the Fish and Game Commission weighed several potential strategies, including an all-out ban on the mere possession of bullfrog meat and a program of systematic culling of wild bullfrogs. Stakeholders then assessed the controversy level of each.
Restoring natural habitats to strengthen the resilience of native fauna? A no-brainer.
A proposed ban on the sale of live frogs was noted as being dicey on the culinary front: “Current customers would likely see non-live bullfrogs as inedible, effectively closing the markets down.” (This, despite the fact that renowned San Francisco restaurants like Z & Y and Angler serve frozen frogs, seemingly with little issue.)
Nevertheless, a live ban might risk encouraging buyers to seek live frog at black markets, which, by their nature, would be difficult to regulate.
Still, a ban on live bullfrogs moved forward as part of a package of proposals that the Fish and Game Commission approved at its December 2023 meeting after it was determined that the potential benefits outweighed whatever uproar might come. The commissioners also appeared confident that they’d at least done the legwork for this recommendation in a thoughtful way.
At that meeting, commission Wildlife Resources Committee member Ari Cornman made sure to note the objections in the lead-up to the vote.
“(The committee) doesn’t want the commission to go forward without at least considering and understanding the cultural implications particularly of that strategy,” he said. “The food really has a cultural component (as a) connection to the homeland.”
However, while it’s true that people around the world have eaten frogs for eons, it’s also true that the American bullfrog’s presence in the East Asian diet only dates back to 1962, when Fidel Castro sent 400 frogs to China, trading breeding insights for rice-growing expertise. Frog farming exploded in the country, spawning a myriad of new dishes and hundreds of frog-centered restaurants.
Still, it’s not a nationwide obsession. Amy Duan, founder of California-based Chinese food publication Chihuo and an immigrant from Hangzhou, a city in southeastern China, could take it or leave it. She said the uproar from folks like former state Sen. Yee is more of a diaspora thing.
“You can’t generalize about Chinese culture, let alone ‘Asians,’ as local activists and politicians opposed to these bans have done in the past,” she said. “I don’t think of frog as a cultural identity food. OK, maybe live frog tastes better, but even for me, I cannot tell that large of a difference.”
That said, there’s a case to be made that some ethnic minorities are right to feel singled out for food bans — and that some sensitivity in the matter is warranted given California’s recent history.
In 1989, two Cambodian refugees in Long Beach were charged with a misdemeanor after it was discovered that they’d killed a dog for food. They argued that they didn’t know it was against the law; indeed, there was no law, though legislators, including then-Assembly Member Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, rushed to criminalize the killing of any creature “commonly kept as a pet or companion” amid rumors of refugees hunting dogs in Golden Gate Park.
At the time, the move made Southeast Asians uneasy. Vu-Duc Vuong, executive director of the Center for Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement, worried that the legislation would inflame local resentment of refugees. “There have been very few, if any, instances of pet eating,” he told the New York Times. “Far more numerous are anti-Asian prejudices and violences based on no more than false or racist stereotypes of Asian Americans.”
I noticed echoes of that fear in my reporting for this story: Very few people were willing to talk on the record about eating or serving bullfrogs. Restaurants refused to allow us to shoot even cellphone photos of the dish.
So, while Chinese culinary expert Dunlop told me that frog meat isn’t involved in any rituals or traditional ceremonies in China, she advised caution in considering a ban.
“One question that I would ask is whether the farming and trade in bullfrogs is any more unsanitary and cruel than the farming and trade of cattle for beef and other foods that Americans of all backgrounds like eating,” she said.
Why not ban raising cattle, which produces methane production that accounts for 3.7% of all greenhouse gas emissions? The production of beef destroys rainforest habitats and can be horrifically cruel, not only to animals but the people (including children) who work in meat packaging plants.
Is beef a cultural identity thing, or do Americans just like it?
Imagine a government body grappling with that question to justify a ban.
“Dangerous, cruel and environmentally destructive eating is a common human problem, and we need to address it collectively rather than in a partial and arguably discriminatory way,” Dunlop said.
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The stakeholder process that the Fish and Game Commission’s subcommittee underwent in the run-up to its ban proposal is a laudable attempt to absorb the input of various communities and educate the public about why a bullfrog ban might be necessary. At the same time, no one in the Asian American communities I reached out to — restaurant owners, advocacy groups and market operators — had any idea that this was happening. One market owner in Oakland’s Chinatown was even in disbelief over the proposed ban, having gone to Sacramento years ago to protest one of the earlier attempts.
Bullfrog tadpoles are on display in an exhibition at the Exploratorium in San Francisco
Once word gets out, the same outrage might bubble up again, and the issue may be tabled for yet another decade. In the meantime, California’s native fauna will continue to face the twin pressures of bullfrog voraciousness and disease.
As of this writing, no one at the Department of Fish and Wildlife could tell me about any plan for communicating this new ban to Asian American communities in the state.
Having accomplices within the community can go a long way. Otherwise, this effort will read as yet another group of white people dictating to minorities what they can and can’t eat. The San Francisco environmental advocacy group WildAid had great success by recruiting Asian celebrities like basketball star Yao Ming and actor Maggie Q to raise awareness of conservation issues in its successful effort to ban shark fin in 2012.
“We’re logical people,” said Fang, who told me that even though a ban would be “tough” for those who love eating freshly butchered frog, she said she believes the community could handle it with enough education about the issues.
Of course, there are ample supplies of fresh bullfrogs in California’s wetlands for anyone who wants to catch and eat them. A recommendation to encourage bullfrog hunting, however, didn’t make it into the committee’s final proposal due to doubts about its effectiveness. As Alvarez, the biologist, told me: “It just isn’t in our culture to get off the couch and get our own food.”
But if anything, reminding people that there are plenty of frogs out there to eat couldn’t hurt. Utah’s Department of Natural Resources took this tack last year, celebrating their deliciousness in a social media campaign.
In California, there’s no limit to how many bullfrogs you can catch; reminding people of this might help lessen outrage, especially since many Asian Americans already forage for moon snails, razor clams and eels in the state’s waterways.
To that end, Duan told me about a common in-joke among Chinese people that applies here: “We can remove all the bad effects of invasive species,” she said. “Let’s just encourage Chinese people to eat them all, and then it’s done!”
Reach Soleil Ho (they/them): soleil@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @hooleil
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