Goat cheese, sure. Goat meat — that's a harder sell in the American mainstream. Despite its popularity in a wide range of global cuisines, from Latin American to Southeast Asian to Middle Eastern, in the United States goat rarely shows up outside small, ethnic markets and restaurants.

But the American perception of goats as lovably quirky, tin-can-chewing dairy animals is beginning to change. Goat is gaining popularity in high-end restaurants across the Bay Area, including Palo Alto's Evvia Estiatorio, San Francisco's Aziza and Oakland's Oliveto. As the Bay Area's diverse food culture continues to grow and residents seek out locally produced food, goat is being brought to the forefront of culinary consciousness by farmers, chefs and home cooks.

"Goat is delicious," said Jim Wimborough, chef at Evvia and enthusiastic advocate of goat meat. "We're known for our lamb dishes here at Evvia, and I tell people I like the goat better. It's got a sweeter and, I think, a less gamy flavor than lamb."

At Evvia, which specializes in high-end Greek cuisine, Wimborough serves goat braised with pearl onions and artichokes or, his favorite way, roasted very simply on a rotisserie with olive oil, oregano and lemon juice.

Wimborough said goat outsells pork at his restaurant and credited Silicon Valley's diverse and adventurous eaters for the meat's popularity. While Evvia may be one of the few upscale restaurants in the area that serves goat,


it certainly isn't the only place in the Silicon Valley where goat has gained an audience.

At Birrieria Jalisco restaurant on San Jose's 13th Street, goat is featured so prominently that the establishment's sign sports a cheerful cartoon goat to beckon customers inside. Enedina Reyes has been cooking birria, a popular chile-spiked goat stew, at the restaurant for five years and has gained an enthusiastic following. The dish's rich, dark broth and tender meat are delicious with just a spoon, but birria aficionados wrap the succulent pieces of meat in house-made tortillas, garnish them with chopped onion, cilantro and lime, then dunk each bite into the bowl of flavorful broth.

Reyes said she uses the whole animal to make her birria, first steaming the meat "like tamales" for four to five hours over a low flame until it's extremely tender. While very young goat, or kid, can be cooked quickly with good results, low, slow cooking is the best bet for tender meat and maximum flavor development.

Sanjeeta Mishra, a Newark resident and avid home cook experienced with using goat in the kitchen, prefers a pressure cooker for the job.

"Goat meat takes time to cook, so we always pressure-cook it," she said. "It's easy to do and it will take less time. Goat requires elaborate preparation, so I plan ahead. We have to be careful when cooking this kind of meat because if you don't cook it well the smell can be strong, or the meat can be tough."

Mishra prefers fresh goat meat to frozen and likes to get her goat at Newark's Faisal Market, which sells goat, chicken, beef and lamb that is halal, adhering to Islamic dietary standards. While a variety of South Bay carnicerias, halal meat markets and Asian grocery stores sell goat meat, much of it is frozen and imported from Australia or New Zealand.

Faisal Market's owner Abdul Ghaffar Durrani says he also prefers fresh, local goat meat to the less expensive imported meat, but he sells both at his store. Durrani said he gets his fresh goat meat from Stockton-based Islamic Meat and Poultry Co., which buys from farms in and near the Bay Area.

At Evvia, Jim Wimborough's biggest frustration is trying to find enough high-quality, locally raised goat meat to feed his hungry clientele. His supplier, Napa Valley Lamb Co., can only provide so many goats, primarily because, Wimborough said, it's difficult to find a processing facility approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that wants to deal with goats. For many of them, it's not worth it to deal with the small amounts of livestock they get from goat farmers.

"I can get a cheaper lower-quality frozen goat from Australia, but it's not what we're trying to do," he said.

Linda Adams of Watsonville's Star Creek Ranch feels Wimborough's pain. A small producer of grass-fed lambs and goats, Adams struggled to find a USDA processing plant she felt good about that was also close enough to be economically feasible. The closest place she could find was Islamic Meat and Poultry, the distributor that supplies Faisal Market as well as a variety of restaurants across the Bay Area.

"I really want to sell it as locally as possible," Adams said of her meat. "I just think that's so important."

Star Creek Ranch didn't start raising goats for meat, but originally acquired them for a land improvement project. Ravenous, but picky, eaters, goats prefer diversity in their diet and can quickly clear an area of overgrown brush and invasive plants. Since the goats have lived at Star Creek, Adams said, there has been an increase in the growth of native perennial grasses and in the overall biological diversity of the land.

"Our whole intent of having animals was to improve the health of the land," she said. "Then we started realizing that the meat was really, really good and that people really enjoyed it, and now we have enough to share on a larger scale."

Beyond being pleasantly palatable, another major benefit Adams sees with her grass-fed goats and lambs is their nutritional value. According to the USDA, goat meat has 50 to 65 percent less fat than beef when the meats are prepared in a similar manner, and both have comparable protein content. Goats are ruminants, a class of mammals that can naturally digest a broad range of plants and grasses, and Adams believes their grazing habits may help improve their nutritional value to us.

"They get to eat a lot of perennial plants that have deep roots, so they get a lot of minerals that they wouldn't get if they were eating an annual crop like alfalfa that's cut all the time," she said.

Adams said that grass-fed goats also have a higher percentage of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids in their meat than grain-fed goats do. "I think that's one of the biggest arguments for grass-fed, besides that it's sustainable," she said.

Contact Jenny Slafkosky at jenny.slafkosky@gmail.com.