Design student Rosanna Yau hosted a Sunday lunch last weekend in which she served a number of dishes made of insects, including cricket and tomato empanadas, mealworm pasta, and a cheesecake with graham cracker-mealworm crust. As Mission Local describes, one guest looked at his salad and noted, “The cricket heads look kind of like the capers, but… the capers don’t have cheerful-looking antennae.”
This meal was all part of Ms. Yau’s thesis project at California College of the Arts, in which she is exploring “how branding can be an effective tool for redefining an obscure subcultural practice, such as entomophagy [i.e. insect eating].” The aim is to try to elevate insects as a viable protein in our burgeoning, gourmet food culture by branding them as “MiniLivestock,” and by cooking them discreetly into the crusts of cheesecakes.
We would, obviously, draw the line at little cricket heads in our salad, or anything involving crickets for that matter. These were some brave lunch guests, we’ll give them that.
And jesus… so San Francisco.
Eating Bugs [Mission Local]
Thesis Project - Rosanna Yau [Design.CCA]
