Diners who merely flit over the menu at the
Specktakel restaurant in the Netherlands are sometimes shocked when their plate
arrives.
"They
just read the first two things in the sentence, and then they think they've got
the bobotie pie with pumpkin mash, raisins and watercress," says owner
Mark Cashoek. "And the last word is actually the insect crumble."
Insect
crumble? Who would want to see crumbled insects on their plate next to the
antelope quiche?
Evidently,
the hundreds of people who swarmed to Cashoek's Specktakel restaurant in
Haarlem, Netherlands, last month to partake in two special bug buffets, both of
which sold out.
Specktakel's
head chef, Michiel den Hartogh, is in the kitchen assembling a "crispy
cricket" concoction — complete with curried mayonnaise, crocodile pie and
fried crickets — with the special care due any delicacy.
Den
Hartogh is not above sampling as he cooks.
"Just
eat it," he says. "Not so crazy."
The
dishes receive rave reviews throughout the packed restaurant. Biologist Twan
Leiyzer is enthusiastic about every course, capped by the dessert — warm cake
with candied worm topping.
Leiyzer
says he can feel the bugs: "It tastes very good."
Cashoek
says he doesn't want Specktakel to be known as just the "bug
restaurant," but he does keep one insect item on the menu at all times.
And he admits that the special all-insect evening gets him lots of buzz — and
customers, too.
"It
is the fear factor and it is the gimmick that they'd try something like
that," he says — not to mention pay more than $70 per plate for the
privilege.
An hour
east of Haarlem at Wageningen University, scientists are taking exactly the
opposite approach — trying to make eating insects less exotic, more normal and
cheaper as a food source. In fact, the European Union is investing more than $4
million to research the use of insects as a protein source for humans.
Ph.D.
student Dennis Oonincx is checking out his mealworms living in the cricket lab,
and says his research into how the worms metabolize a waste product shows how
superior insects are as a protein source — better than cattle or sheep.
"You
can produce more food for people with less input," he says. "It's
good food and it's better for the environment."
Arnold
van Huis, head of Wageningen's entomology department, is one of the world's
premier experts in entomophagy, or eating insects. He believes the rising price
of meat will help change diets.
"If
your Big Mac is going to cost about $100 and your Bug Mac is going to cost only
$4, people will change to a Bug Mac," van Huis says.
Van
Huis says the challenge is to make it delicious. That's where Marian Peters
comes in. For years, as secretary of the Dutch insect breeders association
Venik, she's been active in bringing edible insects to consumers' tables. And
Peters says the first commercially available bug sandwich will be out soon — a
wrap filled with insects and peas.
"People
liked it," Peters says. "Ninety percent want to have it on their
daily menu at restaurants, so now we're upscaling production and bringing them
to the market." (There's also a movement afoot in San Francisco, as we
reported last year.)
But
back at Specktakel restaurant, Gerard van Dyck isn't quite satisfied with his
dinner. He's complaining about the lack of worms.
"You
don't see the worms in it," he says. "There's just a little bit of
worm."
TERI
SCHULTZ
npr.org
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