Chefs are reintroducing insects to the menu with dishes like secret seasonings at omakase bars and desserts like bugs from pop-up restaurants that are now permanent.
Apologies, did you say “worm”? Leonard Tanyag, the chief chef at the omakase bar Juno, makes me virtually cry. He said rather casually that the piece of tuna nigiri I’m eating has ground agave worm that has been cured in mezcal as a garnish. As if it were no more fascinating than standard seasoning. I was obviously mistaken when I assumed it took a lot for an element to surprise me these days.
I used to be the epitome of picky eating—I would pick onions out of everything and gag theatrically when I saw broccoli—and now I consume a powdered, dried form of one of my least favorite foods. My parents, siblings, and patient friends have long found humor in my newly adopted eating habits.
Worms, however, are at a different level of the omnivore hierarchy. To be fair, it wasn’t stated in the press release. In fact, not much is said about the insect menu at Juno, the relatively new omakase bar tucked away behind a curtain on the first floor of Notting Hill’s Mexican-Japanese restaurant Los Mochis. That’s intentional, Tanyag informs me. You wouldn’t discuss matters like salt and pepper. We are merely attempting to normalize it as another element.
They would probably want to be out of spitting distance at the smallest counter in London, which is an intimate six-seater. Tanyag chuckles mischievously; he purposefully waits until the very last minute to reveal his secret ingredient. “We don’t want to poison people’s minds because they’ll think it’s gross right away, so I don’t tell them it’s bugs until after they’ve eaten it.”
It’s actually not at all disgusting. It has more sweetness than you may expect, a hint of umami, and a lot of smoke from the mezcal. Sushi’s simplicity, though in modest amounts, makes it the ideal vehicle for the complex flavors: Tanyag gives each piece a dab, about the size of a pinky finger, of dust before passing it along.
You wouldn’t know it, but Juno has three ground insects lined up on the bar, including Gusano, the worms. Beside the salt, they pose as innocuous small pots of seasonings. Tanyag mostly employs the other two, chapuline (grasshoppers) and chicatanas (flying ants), on nigiri. It resembles an empty canvas. Given that the flavor of the fish is quite delicate, I have opted to add bugs and spices to highlight and elevate its flavor rather than overpower it. It’s true that a dab works better than a spoonful; it has more impact.
The restaurant, which has always placed a strong emphasis on sustainability and whose menu is inspired by the cuisines Tanyag experiences throughout his travels, naturally evolved to include the bugs on the counter.
He discovered the bugs in Oaxaca, where they were a staple food before the Spanish brought tamed animals and were served as far back as the 16th century. He informs me that “chicatanas,” or flying ants, are quite uncommon. “They can only be harvested on one day of the year. They emerge at two or three in the morning, and it gets increasingly challenging to capture them as the sun rises. Tanyag went to Mexico last year for the harvest, which usually happens after the first significant springtime precipitation floods the anthills.– because he was genuinely interested in knowing what farmers go through when they catch these bugs. They are biting you and flying, so it’s really challenging. Foragers retrieve some of the fallen ants, but more courageous collectors stand in buckets of water to prevent getting bitten. The harvest must happen quickly because they are difficult to capture midflight and are only around for a few days. He gained a thorough understanding of the procedure from the trip. Meanwhile, I find the idea appalling and will limit myself to the eating portion.
In Oaxaca, he also discovered the mezcal-cured worms after spotting them in a store window. A mezcal brewer found a larva in a batch and believed it enhanced the flavor in the 1950s. Several producers hurriedly followed suit. These days, it’s common to see shots delivered with a floating worm inside of them. It’s easy to understand how they came to that conclusion after downing a bottle of mezcal. It was long believed that eating the worm had psychedelic or aphrodisiac effects. It is customary in certain regions of Mexico for the maid of honor to consume the worm at a hen party. Tanyag says, “I asked the guy if I could taste it.” It was not like anything I had ever experienced. I had to utilize it for my job.
A portion of that labor is done in Mexico, where the bugs are dried and preserved by heating them on a flat griddle. When Tanyag returns to the UK, she grinds them into a powder that has a texture similar to salt and tinkers with the flavor by incorporating other substances. He says, “I have to deal with a delicate balance between smoky, sweetness, and saltiness, so I don’t like it to be too strong a flavor for the nigiri.” To give the chicatanas extra oomph and to counterbalance the smokiness of the gusano, he adds arbol chilli. A single trip to Mexico can supply the restaurant for a very long time, as he’s only using a dab here and there.
However, Tanyag was initially drawn to the concept of eating bugs because of their sustainability. Introducing insects never felt out of place at Los Mochis because sustainability and seasonality have always been ingrained in the concept. They source the greatest foods from the best possible, mostly local, vendors. Because they consume no resources, insects are highly sustainable. They don’t require any amenities, large areas with water, or similar things, he claims. In the wild, where they are regarded as pests, they are frequently harvested rather than farmed. “They have natural amino acids, which are beneficial to the body, and they are also a very high source of protein.” so you may have that gusano without feeling guilty.
The idea of edible bugs is by no means novel. In fact, they have been consumed for millennia in less picky nations like Japan, where Tanyag was born. They were a fleeting “trend” in the UK a few years ago, but they were excellent, nutrient-dense, sustainable, and undoubtedly headed to a store near you. However, they never really got off the ground. In actuality, Tanyag is against them doing so. Instead of using them as a complete protein substitute, he likes to utilize them as a covert flavoring. “I don’t want to eat bugs exclusively. They will produce in large quantities if they get a lot of popularity. They will use chemicals if they produce in large quantities.
Therefore, he might not be all that interested in finding out that bugs aren’t just found at £200 tasting dinners in London or hen parties in Mexico. Or that a few forward-thinking restaurateurs across town believe the insect movement has far more promise and longevity.
They trust it so highly that they are risking their cash. Yum Bug, Leo Taylor’s first permanent location, opened earlier this year. The two launched a successful pop-up restaurant in 2023 and an insect-ready meal delivery service during a lockdown. “Turning CRICKETS into delicious meat that’s sustainable AF” is the tagline. It’s obvious that its target market is very different. one that uses TikTok.
Although eating insects “was just part of the everyday of growing up” for Taylor, who is half Thai and lived throughout southeast Asia as a child, he never intended for it to become a regular part of life in London. When he came across a 2013 UN report while working in design, it stated that using bugs as food might improve nutrition, lower pollution, and contribute in the fight against world hunger.
Following the Covid-19 pandemic a few years later, Taylor and Thomas, having more free time during the lockdown, “decided to launch our first product, a recipe box called the Bug Box,” which they assembled in his mother’s garage, dubbed “the best place to experiment with cooking with insects,” he quips. There were recipes for bean stew with cricket, lasagne with cricket, jalfrezi with cricket, and chilli with cricket.
Yum Bug’s first version was a pop-up at Old Street’s The Bower in October of last year, with some funding from “people like the Bransons… as well as a big one, Brewdog.”Cooks such as Sam Clark, Clem Haxby, Tim Molena, and James Nathan produced delicacies such as tomato pappardelle with cricket pieces, cricket ragu, and cricket mince covered with hummus. You get the idea. It was well-received. If only an Indian restaurant company hadn’t already registered a trademark for the name Kricket.
James Watt, the BrewDog founder, suggested that we create a restaurant. We vehemently disagreed, stating that it would be a disastrous idea given the current trend of businesses closing. Says Taylor, “It’s a difficult place to be, let alone if your whole product is insects. If the man spearheading a campaign to throw taxidermy cats from a helicopter over parliament had proposed something similar, I would have thought pretty much the same. After just a few months of operation, they were “serving thousands of people,” proving that this was one of his better ideas.
The menu is much the same as the pop-up: tiny plates based on bugs. Insects are present in everything, even the dessert and burrata. The insect form would be present anywhere that flesh is normally seen, the man claims. We also use the entire insect; thus, we’ve prepared roasted crickets fried in spicy oil and served with burrata. It’s the crowd’s favorite. So are their best-selling cricket mince kofta and cricket brisket tacos.
I find it all quite appealing, but what are the opinions of picky Londoners? The sale of whole crickets was “much harder.” Consuming food with eyes on it turns most people off. People may get uncomfortable thinking about fish or seafood, according to Taylor. “We find that it helps a lot right away when it doesn’t look like an insect.”
It’s kind of a novelty in the equally cutthroat dating scene. “On a number of date evenings, the individual who made the reservation hasn’t always informed the other person what it is. There has been an outcry at the door, but generally people are walking in, says Taylor. “I think the small plate concept is good because it’s very non-committal.” I can’t determine which is scarier, listening to someone rave about the benefits of small plates or the possibility that my date will fool me into eating a burrata with an insect on it.
In any case, it’s an idea that people are obviously ready to embrace. It was only a matter of time, I guess, following last year’s infatuation with tripe, until even stranger items started to show up on menus.
Although Yum Bug’s offering is significantly different from Juno’s, Taylor had similar reasons for entering the bug industry. “They’re one of the most sustainable proteins in the world,” he says. Even though he has no prior restaurant management experience, he may support his claims with the following data: Compared to beef, crickets use 15 times less carbon dioxide.. With a tenth of the water and land used for traditional cattle, it provides the same quantity of protein. About ten times less land would be needed to produce the same amount of food. Their crickets come from a farm nearby in Cambridgeshire, which is helpful because they don’t have to take a plane back to Mexico to collect them by hand.
Furthermore, our mince has 50% more protein than beef mince from the store in terms of nutrition. More calcium than milk, potassium than bananas, iron greater than spinach, B12 greater than red meat, fiber greater than brown rice, and omega 3 and 6 comparable to salmon are all present. It is a never-ending list.
The term “ultra-processed,” which appears on the 2024 bingo card, is also included in that list. Yum Bug is still classified as a protein alternative by Taylor, but even so, “if you look at the meat alternatives category right now, a lot of stuff is full of ultra-processed ingredients.” You need to add a lot of unhealthy ingredients to a plant-based food in order to make it seem like meat and bleed. It sounds like something from Tim Spector’s playbook. For instance, our mince is made up of three ingredients: wholewheat flour, salt, and cricket. And seventy-five percent cricket—such pure, natural nourishment.
Alright, we understand. Evidently, persuading people that cricket is a better option than cows isn’t as far off as it would have looked ten years ago. In actuality, business and bureaucracy are Yum Bug’s main problems. Although premium beef is currently quite expensive, costing approximately £10 to £10 per kilogram, Yum Bug charges £15. Meanwhile, crickets are priced at approximately £12 per kilogram. Lowering pricing is currently one of our main challenges. I don’t have to tell him that it will be essential to their survival in a market and a period as tough as this one.
Second, despite the fact that Yum Bug selected bugs due to their sustainability, nutritional value, and deliciousness, laws prohibit them from selling anything other than a select few species. In order to convince lawmakers that insects should be included in British diets for the sake of the environment and public health, there is still work to be done, even in light of the UN report’s suggestion that wasps, beetles, and other insects are underutilized as food for humans and animals.
Thousands of people reserve reservations at these places; I most definitely do not need persuading. The bug trend is definitely here to stay.