New York Art Gallery Serving (Free) Grilled Rat Samplers

Last week, a select group of people paid $100 each to eat a five-course rat dinner prepared in the name of art in New York. No big deal.

Luckily for us plebeians, the artist, Laura Ginn, will be serving up a rat sampler for the general public from 6 to 8 p.m. today, accompanying her art exhibit "Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch." The "grilled rat sampler" will be prepared by chef Yuri Hart at the Allegra LaViola Gallery at 179 East Broadway.

"We don't take things from the world. We have so many levels of mediation between us and the things that we eat and the things that we wear," Ginn explains in her Kickstarter video. Her art exhibit, which also includes clothing made from the pelts of rats, hopes to share the process of hunting, skinning, cooking, etc.

The rats, however, won't be your standard New York City rat scurrying through the subway tracks; instead they were raised in a facility in California, bred to be eaten. So don't try this with that rat in your basement.