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Henrie's Recipes
Bugs on the menu?
Posted Sun, 20 Jul 2008
The owners of Vij's restaurant knew they were taking a huge gamble when they decided to add bugs to the menu of their upscale, internationally-known Vancouver eatery.
"Eating bugs is a foreign concept in North America," co-owner Meeru Dhalwala told AFP. "People here think bugs are dirty. There's a yuck factor."
But gram for gram, experts say insects are more nutritious to eat and better for the environment to produce than popular foods such as beef and chicken.
And so for mostly ecological reasons, Dhalwala and her husband Vikram Vij — who describe themselves as both environmentalists and "food experts" — decided to introduce crickets on their new summer menu at the restaurant, which specialises in Punjab-influenced Indian food.
Apart from having to battle public perception however, Vij's ran straight into another problem — the American crickets they were dishing up required an import license from Canadian authorities for human consumption.
So the crickets are off the menu again, although Vij's owners are hoping it's only a temporary setback.
"I was not looking to scare people," said Vij, referring to his recipe for a spicy paranta made with roasted, ground cricket. "I was looking for nutritious, environmental, and flavourful dishes."
Paranta is a type of Indian flatbread, which Vij's made with a dough of ground crickets, flour, spices and buttermilk, then served with titbits of turnip cooked with spices.
The tiny crickets, which were not visible in the paranta, gave the bread a granular consistency similar to buckwheat pancakes with a nutty flavour.
Insects are common fare in many countries, especially in Africa and Asia.
Historically, they were a staple in the diet of native North Americans. But in Europe and North America, a bug on a plate or in a drink still shocks.
'We're getting hate mail'
Yet with food prices soaring, and the cost of producing meat a hot topic of discussion, the potential of insects as human food has been raised at science conferences and magazine and newspaper articles.
Vij's used crickets raised in Washington State on organic apples and potatoes, which are sold as human food in the United States.
But because the American crickets lacked a Canadian import permit as food fit for human consumption, Vij's was temporarily forced to take them off the menu.
"Hopefully it won't take long," said Richard Taki of the local public health agency.
Crickets "have been sold around the US and used for food items. I can't see it being a problem".
If they fail to get the necessary permit, Dhalwala said: "I'll figure out how to get a British Colombia farmer to raise crickets for 'legal' human consumption in Canada."
But the cricket dish has stirred controversy in the local Indian ethnic community. "We're getting hate mail," said Dhalwala, with people accusing Vij's of "degrading Indian food... saying that we're humiliating Indian food".
Dhalwala's first career was in international development and said Vij's has tried to incorporate "social democratic" principles such as profit-sharing into its concept since opening in 1996.
Visionaries in their own right
"The environment is the primary thing in Vikram's and my life," she said, noting that for their family of four, their restaurant "was our biggest carbon emission".
Dhalwala contacted David George Gordon, an American writer in Seattle and author of "The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook" to ask his advice about serving insects.
Gordon provided several kinds of bugs for Dhalwala, Vij and Vij's staff to munch on. After considering grasshoppers and a worm, they settled on the crickets.
"I think the people who own Vij's are visionary," said Gordon.
Apart from Typhoon, a private-airport restaurant in Santa Monica, California that has insects on its menu, and a few restaurants specialising in ethnic Mexican fare, bug dishes are extremely rare in North American restaurants.
Dhalwala said Vij's may be one of few North American eateries that can afford to take such a risk.
The restaurant has been well received in influential dailies such as the New York Times, and is so popular there is a 90-minute wait for a table even on week nights.
"We've been in business for 14 years, and we've built up the trust of diners," she said. "This is not a gimmick... one thing we can do is educate people about food. "I've got the pulpit from which to promote it."
AFP
