China’s frog restaurants prosper as appetite for delicacy known since the Ming dynasty explodes
- China has long dined on frogs, but a gift of bullfrogs from Cuba’s Fidel Castro helped feed a huge increase in the appetite for them in recent years
- Restaurant chains specialising in frog have sprung up, serving frog in hotpot, on rice and noodles, pan-fried, deep-fried, in soup and grilled
The business of frog breeding and consumption in China, estimated by Chinese media to be worth 50 billion yuan (US$7.6 billion), was plunged into uncertainty in February when the coronavirus outbreak prompted authorities to suspend the trading and eating of all animals that fell outside the categories of livestock and domesticated aquatic animals.
However, the industry heaved a sigh of relief a month later when the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs classified frogs as domesticated aquatic animals and exempted them from the ban.
The month-long suspension shone the spotlight on a rapidly expanding industry which, according to dining industry website New Catering Big Data, supplies 30,000 specialist frog restaurants across China.
The first Kungfu Froggy restaurant opened in the southern city of Nanning in 2015 and has since spawned a chain of more than 180 restaurants. Co-founder Jennifer Jiang says when the restaurant started, the specialist frog restaurant industry was practically non-existent.
“The other co-founder, Eric Xia, comes from Hunan. He loves spicy braised frog from his hometown, so he wanted to set up a specialist chain just like the ones for crayfish. Inspired by [the Hollywood animated hit] Kung Fu Panda, we came up with a wuxia theme for the restaurant chain,” she says.