In October 2023, a pop-up restaurant serving dishes like cricket-topped hummus, well, sprung up. It proved so popular, it's now gone permanent.
Yum Bug — founded by entomologist, Aaron Thomas, and designer Leo Taylor — specialises in small plates that substitute the usual meats for crickets. The Cambridgeshire-farmed bugs are turned into mince, strips, chunks and crumbs, before being used in various recipes. On the menu of the new bricks and mortar restaurant in Finsbury Park right now, there's cricket kofte with roasted peanut hummus, cricket Cornish pasty... and even a cricket lasagne.
What's with all the crickets? The founders claim that "bugs are banging" — tasty, yes, but also relatively healthy (containing 30% natural protein), not to mention better for the environment (producing 15 x less CO2 than beef per kg of protein).
And it turns out that Londoners don't like crickets... they love them. Soft launch week at Yum Bug (which runs from 20-24 February) has already sold out, and if you want to crunch your way through a Guinness Welsh rarebit made with cricket mince, you're going to have to book a table well in advance. In other words, hop to it!
Yum Bug, Finsbury Park
