Chilied cricket versus steaming chicken feet －チリ・コオロギ vs 蒸し鶏の足

It can be hard for travellers to go to a foreign country and order food in a restaurant when they are not so familiar with the local language.

I have had a few disasters myself.  In Thailand, I saw a restaurant selling chicken feet.  I had never tried chicken feet before so I thought I would give them a go.  I pointed to a few which were sitting behind a glass counter.  I expected to get one or two as a side dish.  Instead, a while later the beaming chef produced a steaming plate piled high with chicken feet.  Tentatively I tried one.  It was rubbery and absolutely disgusting.  I didn’t think that I could eat many of them without vomiting.  I then ordered something else and played the old game of moving the feet around artfully to make their numbers appear smaller.  I switched some to my other plates, hid some under my rice and told the chef that they were delicious as I paid and left.

Britain is not generally known for exotic food.  The worst a tourist might expect is to order a hamburger and expect it to have any ham in it.

But perhaps that is all about to change.  It takes a lot of space and water to raise cows and pigs for human consumption.  So some environmentalists have suggested that we ought to eat more insects as a way of protecting the environment.  Partly for that reason, a new restaurant has opened up in the UK which specialises in cooking insects.

The owner of Grub Kitchen said, “We want to pioneer the Movement to normalise the eating of bugs on a day to day basis.  We are treating them as a normal food item, incorporating insect protein as an ingredient but using normal flavours we are familiar with and everyday food items we recognise.”

Sample items on the menu are chilied cricket cocktail and Pad Thai with worms.

I think it’s a wonderful idea.  I have never eaten an insect before but I think it must be a better way to get protein than farming intelligent animals.  Hopefully, the insects will suffer less than farmed cows and pigs.  And it will help the Earth too.

But I can’t help but wonder what will happen to unfortunate Thai tourists who come to Britain and find themselves in this restaurant without quite understanding what it is.  They might be feeling homesick and be hugely relieved to see Pad Thai on the menu.  Without knowing the word “worm”, they might guess that it is a cut of chicken.  Soon after, they’ll be hiding bits of worm under their napkins. 

Vocabulary:

a cricket – A type of leaping insect

to give something a go – to try something

to be beaming – To be smiling broadly

tentatively – Hesitantly; carefully and without confidence

to vomit – to bring up the contents of your stomach, for example when you are suffering from food poisoning

artfully – skilfully; creatively

an environmentalist – Someone dedicated to protecting the environment, or nature

grub – This is a slang term for food.  For example, “That restaurant has great grub.”

a grub – A type of insect

to pioneer something – to be one of the first to do something; to help to develop something new and make it popular, successful etc.

a bug – This is a slang term for an insect

to incorporate something – to take something in or include it as part of the whole

Pad Thai – Thai style fried noodles

a worm – An animal with a long, soft body which burrows underground