Phoenix ? A restaurant owner who put lion burgers on the menu in honor of the World Cup has felt a roar of anger from outraged animal rights activists.

Cameron Selogie, owner of the Il Vinaio restaurant in Mesa, served burgers made with African lion this week as a nod to the tournament in South Africa. Reservations sold out, with a waiting list 100 long.

A lion meat patty is shown ready-to-eat Thursday in Mesa, Ariz. Il Vinaio restaurant owner Cameron Selogie was trying to honor the World Cup soccer tournament and drum up business got a whole lot more attention than he hoped, some of it unfriendly, for serving burgers made with African lion.

But the burgers also attracted international attention and the scorn of animal rights activists, who picketed outside the restaurant. Selogie has even received some death threats.

And now Selogie himself is questioning whether the meat was fair game.

“I was led to believe they were not hunted, they were not shot, they were not abused,” Selogie said. “I feel I was misled by this.”

Serving African lion meat is perfectly legal, said Michael Herndon, a spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration. Game meat such as lion can be sold as long as the species isn’t endangered, and the CDC hasn’t prohibited importation of African lion, although its Asiatic cousin is on the endangered list.

Selogie described the meat as tasting slightly “gamey,” almost like a savory beef jerky. About 20 percent of Il Vinaio’s patty is ground beef, because the lion meat was so lean, Selogie said.

Selogie purchased 10 pounds of ground lion meat — enough for 40 burgers — from Phoenix-based Gourmet Imports Wild Game, a distributor that Selogie has worked with before and found to be reputable.

“Everything’s always been on the up and up,” Selogie said. “So I felt comfortable with what he told me.”

Gourmet Imports, run by Rick Worrilow, supplies everything from alligator to zebra for customers. Worrilow said he purchased the meat from a shipper in Illinois, Czimer’s Game & Sea Foods. The owner, Richard Czimer, told him the meat is inspected by the USDA and comes from a free-range farm — something Worrilow, a vegetarian, considered important.

But USDA spokesman Brian Mabry said in an e-mail that lion meat is not inspected by the agency, and the agency would look into whether there was a misuse of the USDA mark.

Phone calls to Czimer’s by The Associated Press were not immediately returned.

Richard Czimer was sentenced to six months in prison in 2003 for illegally buying and selling tiger and leopard meat. In an interview with CNNMoney.com, he said he gets his lion meat from another man who runs a skinning business, whom he refused to name.

In South Africa, lion meat is shunned and animal welfare activists expressed shock at the burgers served in Phoenix. Mike Cadman, a wildlife research journalist based in Johannesburg, describes the eating of lion meat as a “bizarre craze” practiced by those who want to try it because it is not illegal.