Hotel launches insect restaurant for National Insect Week

A hotel is launching a pop up restaurant that will only serve dishes that feature insects as part of National Insect Week.

Grub Kitchen at Celtic Manor Resort will offer curried cricket pakora, toasted cumin, mealworm crepes alongside many other insect related delicacies.

The restaurant will be launched in partnership with Bug Farm Foods and Grub Kitchen in Pembrokeshire, the UK’s first dedicated insect restaurant which opened in 2015.

With the restaurant the chefs aim is to normalise bug eating, introducing more people to the many nutritious edible insects that are part of everyday diets in many parts of the world.

Andy Holcroft, head chef at Celtic Manor Resort said: “Insects have served as a food source for people for tens of thousands of years, all over the planet. Today insect eating is rare in the western world, but insects remain a popular food in many places like Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Africa, Mexico, Columbia and New Guinea to name just a few.

“Many species are rich in protein and contain omega-3 so people eat insects for nutritional value as well as for taste. There are an estimated 1,462 species of recorded edible insects and arachnids. Some of the most popular species for eating include crickets, grasshoppers, ants, as well as beetle larvae and caterpillars, that are also referred to as worms, such as the mealworm, mopani worm, silkworm and waxworm.

“We have found a real appetite exists for trying insects since we opened Grub Kitchen in 2015 and we’re delighted to be partnering with an iconic venue like the Celtic Manor Resort and the beautiful setting at the Newbridge on Usk to introduce some of our dishes to a new audience.”

The restaurant will run from 21 to 23 June.