There's a bug in my bread

2008-07-03 20:08

Vancouver - 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.

"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 bits 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.

Hate mail

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 US.

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.

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.

A risk

"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.

Dhalwala said Vij's may be one of few North American eateries that can afford to take such a risk.

- AFP