Dasher? Dancer? M-M-M-M Good! -- That `Caribou' You Eat Is Really Reindeer

ANCHORAGE - While Santa hitched his eight reindeer for his global gift-giving mission Sunday night, fine diners at tony restaurants around the country tucked into plates of caribou, one of those exotic meats pitched as a healthy alternative to beef.

Here's a little Christmas fact to chew on along with that fancy dinner: Caribou, by another name, is Blitzen, Prancer and Rudolph.

Alaskans don't have any illusions about such things. Supermarket-deli cases proudly feature reindeer sausage, locally made and often locally slaughtered.

Gov. Tony Knowles' deli in Anchorage serves reindeer stew.

But elsewhere, apparently, it's considered improper to put sacred holiday icons on the menu, so the white lie persists.

"It's pure marketing," said Dave Vohaska, owner of Specialty Game, Inc., a Chicago exotic meat distributor.

"I think it rolls off the tongue a little bit better," he said. "People think of reindeer, they think of Santa Claus."

The only difference between caribou and reindeer is a corral. Reindeer are domesticated caribou, herded to slaughter just like cattle.

Dr. Bert Gore, the state veterinarian in charge of monitoring the reindeer industry notes, however, that the domestication rarely sticks. When caribou and reindeer intermingle, the reindeer usually take off with their wild cohorts.

At the Cadillac Grill, a Jackson Hole, Wyo., restaurant that features game dishes, the reindeer comes on a roasted rack with

rabbit sausage or in a pasta mixed with elk. It's passed off as caribou, but it comes from Bering Sea Reindeer Products on Nunivak Island, 550 miles west of Anchorage, the same place nearly all of the reindeer meat in the nation begins.

"During the Christmas holidays I don't think it's a good idea to call it reindeer," said Loretto Sanguinegti, a chef at the Cadillac Grill.

For Herb Eckmann, reindeer sausage has been one of the pillars of his meat-processing business in Anchorage. Shortly after opening Alaska Sausage and Seafood in 1963 the company began producing a small amount for local markets.

"There wasn't anything like it before, and it was immediately popular," the German native says.

Now the company has seven reindeer products and includes them in gift packages Alaskans ship to their friends and relatives in the Lower 48.

Popular isn't the same as inexpensive, however. Reindeer meat costs about five times as much as beef, and the sausage only contains about 5 percent of the exotic meat, Eckmann said.

At Colorado Mountain Game, a meat wholesale north of Denver, vice president Roy Van Zant oversees distribution of nearly all the reindeer produced in Alaska. He admits that nearly all his customers shy away from calling it reindeer. The company ships cuts of meat and also makes a summer sausage and reindeer bratwurst.

The Goldener Hirsch Inn, a restaurant in Park City, Utah, serves tenderloin of Alaska Caribou with wild mushrooms. It costs $34, the most expensive entree but also one of the top two sellers, said Jeanne Lehan, the restaurant's manager.

"The chef knows it's reindeer and I know it," Lehan says. "I think it's like beef and cow. You don't put cow on your menu."