ants go marching

Most people wouldn’t look to live ants as a choice of seasoning. But most people are not critically acclaimed chef René Redzepi. Currently on a two-month pop-up residency in Japan, Redzepi has tweaked Noma’s usual Nordic menu to suit his Japanese clientele. Using locally sourced Tokyo produce, Redzepi offers his guests dishes such as shaved monkfish liver, walnut steamed tofu, and jumbo shrimp seasoned with several live black ants. The dish is an interpretation of botan ebi — shrimp sushi — substituting the usual citrus seasoning with ants from the Nagano forest. Writing for Bloomberg, Tejal Rao described the shrimp as “so recently dead that its brain has yet to telegraph this information to the rest of its body. For now it’s all twitching muscle and whirring antennae.” For those familiar with Noma, the use of live ants in a meal won’t come as a surprise. One of Redzepi’s signature dishes is beef tartare and ants and a 2012 pop-up restaurant in London featured live ants served with crème fraîche. The prospect of eating live ants hasn’t deterred eager foodies from dining at Noma — the restaurant currently has a waiting list of 60,000.

McDonald’s is selling bottles of its “secret” Big Mac sauce for the first time — and it is going to cost you more than a smile. The first bottle is being auctioned off on eBay and bidding is up to US$18,000. Additional bottles containing just 25 ml of the sauce will go on sale for 50 cents a piece at McDonald’s locations only throughout Australia this month. McDonald’s hasn’t revealed whether the sauce would be sold in other countries. The burger chain has started running a number of promotions in an effort to boost lagging sales. In the U.S., the company started accepting a new form of payment that includes selfies and hugs. The promotion highlights what the chain calls its “lovin’ ” ad campaign. Customers will be chosen at random to participate in the deal.