On a recent vacation in Tokyo, Takumi Yamamoto opted for a special lunch of cricket curry and silkworm sashimi, washed down with a water bug cider.
The 26-year-old office worker, from the western prefecture of Hyogo, is one of scores of consumers around the world who have taken an interest in entomophagy, or eating insects, as bugs slowly become a more viable food source.
As a child, Yamamoto said he sometimes snacked on soy-sauce basted grasshoppers. In Tokyo, he indulged in insect cuisine at Take-Noko cafe, which embraces all things buggy.
Photo: Reuters
“It’s fun to select from a wider variety of dishes,” Yamamoto said at the cozy second-floor cafe, surrounded by insect art and terrariums of skittering beetles, ants and cockroaches.
“Everything was tasty. In particular, the water bug cider was quite refreshing and delicious, like a green apple,” he said.
Entomophagy started to be taken seriously globally after the UN deemed bugs a sustainable source of protein to feed a global population estimated to swell to 9.7 billion by 2050.
The impact of the livestock industry on climate change, coupled with global food security issues due to extreme weather and conflicts, have also increased the interest in the high-quality, economical nutrition that bugs provide.
While some consumers think eating insects is just gross, Japan has a rich culinary history of insects as food.
Grasshoppers, silkworms and wasps were traditionally eaten in landlocked regions where meat and fish are scarce, a practice that picked up amid food shortages during and after World War II, Take-Noko manager Michiko Miura said.
“Recently, there have been advances in rearing things like crickets and mealworms for food, so the possibility of using insects as ingredients is really growing,” she said.
Several companies, including national bakery brand Pasco, have sold cakes and snacks made from cricket flour, and processed food maker Nichirei and telecom Nippon Telegraph and Telephone have invested in bug ventures in the past year.
The term “crickets” also started to trend in Japanese media recently after reports the powdered insects were being used in school lunches and snacks.
Consumer interest has also extended to Take-Noko, which Miura says is often fully booked on weekends.
Its curry is studded crickets in meatball form and dried garnish. The delicate “sashimi” is the leftover casing of silkworms, and the cider is infused with water bug extract and topped with a whole insect, said to taste like shrimp.
The restaurant is the brainchild of Takeo Saito who founded his namesake company Takeo Inc nine years ago and has grown it to include a packaged food business offering more than 60 types of arthropod treats, from scorpions to tarantulas.
“Our aim is not for insects to be something separate, but to be enjoyed at the same table as vegetables, fish and meat,” Saito said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS