Japanese ramen with insects, from a chef who wants crickets, caterpillars and silkworm to be seen as delicacies, not a ‘last resort’

As a child, Yuto Shinohara spent most of his time catching grasshoppers and cicadas and would eat them in secret

Covid-19 spoiled his plans to open an insect cuisine restaurant in Tokyo; instead, his team designed a pack of cricket ramen that can be cooked at home

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Fancy cricket flavoured ramen? Bug enthusiast Yuto Shinohara is planning on normalising insect cuisine in Japan – he wants to open up a restaurant that serves insects in Tokyo. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:30am, 27 May 2020Updated: 10:43am, 27 May 2020

In a steamy Tokyo kitchen, a roasted scent wafts through the air as Yuto Shinohara prepares soup stock for ramen – derived not from pork or chicken, but crickets.

“In this pan, we have 10,000 crickets, making stock for 100 bowls,” Shinohara explains as he stirs a large silver pot.

The bowls of ramen produced by Shinohara and his team look and smell like those at restaurants across Japan: fine white noodles sit in a savoury soup, topped with a juicy slice of pork and fat pieces of pickled bamboo shoots.

There’s little to give away the fact that 26-year-old Shinohara uses crickets in the broth, oil, soy sauce and even noodles. Except, that is, for the deep-fried insect perched next to a mitsuba leaf garnish on the soup’s surface.

Yuto Shinohara fries crickets. He says his love of all things nature-related led him to insect-based food. Photo: AFP

Shinohara isn’t a professional chef – in fact his preferred description of himself is “Earth boy”. And it’s his love of all things nature-related that led him to insect-based food.