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Sorry, did you say worm?” I practically splutter at Leonard Tanyag, executive chef at omakase bar Juno. He’s just casually mentioned that the piece of tuna nigiri in my mouth is garnished with ground mezcal-cured agave worm. Like it’s no more interesting than regular seasoning. I thought it took a lot for an ingredient to surprise me these days – clearly, I was wrong.

“抱歉，你刚才说的是虫子吗？” 当Juno怀石料理吧的行政主厨伦纳德-塔尼亚格（Leonard Tanyag）提到我嘴里的这块金枪鱼握寿司是用墨西哥龙舌兰虫腌制磨碎后调味的时，我几乎喷饭地说。他说得好随意，好像这只是普通的调味料而已。我本以为现在很难再有什么食材能让我感到惊讶——显然，我错了。

The poster child of fussy eating growing up – I’d pick onions out of everything and performatively retch at the sight of broccoli – now I’m eating a dehydrated, powdered version of one of my least favourite creatures. My reformed eating habits have long been a source of amusement for my parents, siblings and long-suffering friends.

小时候我就是个挑食的典型——我会把洋葱从任何菜里挑出来，看到西兰花就假装干呕——而现在我却在吃一种脱水后磨成粉的我最厌恶的生物。我改变了我挑食的习惯，这也成为我父母、兄弟姐妹和长期忍受我习惯的朋友们取笑的源泉。

But still, worms are on another level of the omnivore scale. In my defence, it wasn’t in the press release; in fact, not much at all is mentioned about the bug offering at Juno, the new-ish omakase bar hidden behind a curtain on the first floor of Mexican-Japanese restaurant Los Mochis in Notting Hill. That’s by design, Tanyag tells me. “You wouldn’t talk about salt and pepper and things like that. It’s just another ingredient, and we’re trying to normalise it a bit.”

但说实话，虫子在杂食动物的饮食范围中是另一个层次。为我自己辩解一下，这可没在新闻稿里提到；事实上，在诺丁山的墨西哥-日本餐厅Los Mochis一楼帘幕后面新开的Juno怀石料理吧里，关于虫子的介绍并不多。Tanyag告诉我这是有意为之的。“你不会特意提到盐和胡椒之类的东西。这只是另一种食材，我们只是试图让它变得更普遍一些。”

I suppose that at an intimate six-seater counter – the smallest in London – they’d also like to be out of spitting range. Tanyag laughs mischievously; waiting until the last possible moment to divulge his secret ingredient is also deliberate. “I don’t tell people it’s bugs until they’ve eaten it because we don’t want to poison their minds, because they’ll immediately think it’s gross.”

我猜想在这间仅有六个座位的亲密小吧台——伦敦最小的吧台——他们也不希望顾客当场吐出来。Tanyag顽皮地笑了笑；他故意等到最后一刻才透露他的秘密食材也是有原因的。“我不会在客人吃之前告诉他们这是虫子，因为我们不想先给他们一个负面的印象，否则他们立刻就会觉得很恶心。”

In fact, it’s not gross at all. It’s subtler than you’d think; sweeter, too, with a bit of umami and plenty of smoke from the mezcal. The simplicity of sushi is the perfect vehicle to carry the complex flavours, albeit in small doses: Tanyag dabs a dusted pinky finger-sized amount on each piece before handing it over.

事实上，这一点也不恶心。 它的味道比你想象的更微妙，还有点甜。还有一点鲜味和大量来自龙舌兰酒的烟熏味。简单的寿司刚好能承载这些复杂的风味，尽管其中的分量很小：Tanyag在每块寿司上抹上一小撮粉末，然后递给顾客。

Gusano, the worms, are one of three ground insects you’ll find lined up on the bar at Juno, though you wouldn’t know it. They masquerade as innocent little pots of seasonings – right next to the salt. The others are chicatanas (flying ants) and chapuline (grasshoppers), and Tanyag mostly uses them on the nigiri. “It’s like a blank canvas. It has a very subtle flavour so I’ve chosen the bugs and the spices to just put a little bit of an accentuation on it, an emphasis, to enhance the flavour of the fish, rather than taking over.” True, a dab is preferable to a spoonful of the stuff; it packs a punch.

Gusano就是龙舌兰虫，是你在Juno吧台上看到的三种磨碎的昆虫之一，尽管你可能不会注意到它们。它们伪装成无辜的小调料罐，就放在盐的旁边。其他两种是chicatanas（飞蚁）和chapuline（蚂蚱），Tanyag主要把它们用在握寿司上。“这就像一张空白画布。握寿司的味道非常微妙，所以我选择了这些昆虫和香料来稍微增强一下鱼的味道，而不是盖过它。”确实，一点点粉末比一大勺更可取，因为它的味道很浓郁。

The bugs arrived on the counter as a natural evolution of the restaurant, which has always been focused on sustainability and whose menu reflects the cuisines Tanyag encounters on his travels.

这些昆虫出现在吧台上是餐厅自然发展的结果。餐厅一直专注于可持续发展，其菜单反映了Tanyag在旅行中遇到的各种美食。

He came across the bugs in Oaxaca, where they’ve been on the menu as far back as the 16th century when they’re a vital protein source before the Spanish introduced domesticated animals. “Chicatanas (flying ants) are very, very rare,” he tells me. “You can harvest them just one day a year. They come out early in the morning around 2 or 3am, and if the sun comes up, it becomes very difficult” to catch them. Last year, Tanyag travelled to Mexico for the harvest – which typically occurs after the first major rainstorm in spring floods the ants’ nests – because he “really wanted to experience what the farmers experience when catching these bugs. It’s very difficult because they are flying and they are biting you.” Some of the ants fall to the ground and are gathered by foragers, while more daring collectors stand in buckets of water to avoid getting bitten. They’re not easy to catch mid-flight, and they’re around for only a couple of days, so the harvest has to be swift. The trip gave him a full appreciation of the process. I, meanwhile, am horrified by the prospect and will be sticking to the eating part.

他在瓦哈卡发现了这些昆虫，在那里它们早在16世纪就已经出现在菜单上，当时它们是西班牙人引进家畜之前的重要蛋白质来源。“Chicatanas（飞蚁）非常非常稀有，”他告诉我。“你一年只能有一天能采集到它们。它们在凌晨2、3点左右出现，如果太阳升起来，捕捉就变得非常困难。”去年，Tanyag前往墨西哥参加收集飞蚁——通常发生在春季第一次大暴雨冲刷蚁巢之后——因为他“真的很想亲身体验农民捕捉这些昆虫时的经历。这非常困难，因为它们会飞，还会咬人。”一些蚂蚁掉到地上，被采集者捡起来，而更勇敢的采集者则站在水桶里以避免被咬。要在它们飞行当中捕捉它们并不容易，而且它们只出现几天，所以采集必须迅速。这次旅行让他对这个过程有了充分的理解。而我呢，对这种前景感到恐惧，我还是专注于吃就好。

He also came across the mezcal-cured worms in Oaxaca, after spying them in a shop window. In the 1950s, a mezcal brewer discovered a larva in a batch and thought it improved the flavour. Other producers quickly jumped on the bandwagon. Today, you’ll often see shots served with a worm floating inside. It was long thought that eating the worm had hallucinogenic or aphrodisiac effects – easy to see how they drew that conclusion after downing a bottle of mezcal. In some parts of Mexico, it’s traditional for the maid of honour to eat the worm on a hen do. “I asked the guy if I could taste it,” says Tanyag. “It was unlike anything I’d had before. I had to use it in my work.”

他也在瓦哈卡发现了龙舌兰腌制的虫子，他是在一家商店的橱窗里看到它们后发现的。在20世纪50年代，一位龙舌兰酿酒师在一批龙舌兰中发现了一只幼虫，并认为它改善了味道。其他生产商迅速跟上了潮流。今天，你经常会看到酒吧里供应的龙舌兰酒，里面漂浮着一只虫子。长期以来，人们一直认为吃虫子会产生幻觉或春药效果——在喝了一瓶龙舌兰之后很容易理解为什么他们得出了这个结论。在墨西哥的一些地方，新娘的伴娘在婚前派对上吃虫子是一种传统。“我问那个人我能否尝一尝，” Tanyag说。“它和我以前尝过的任何东西都不一样。我必须把它用在我的工作中。”
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Part of that work takes place in Mexico, where the bugs are heated over a flat griddle to dry and preserve them. Back in the UK, Tanyag grinds them into a powder with a texture not dissimilar to salt, and experiments with the flavour by adding different ingredients. “I don’t like it to be too strong a flavour for the nigiri because I have to deal with a delicate balance between smoky and sweetness and saltiness,” he explains. He adds arbol chilli to the chicatanas to give them more of a kick, and to the gusano, to balance out the smokiness. As he’s only using a dab here and there, a single trip to Mexico can supply the restaurant for a long time.

这项工作的一部分在墨西哥进行，那里的昆虫会在平底铁板上加热以便晾干和保存它们。回到英国，Tanyag将它们磨成粉末，质地与盐相似，并尝试通过添加不同的配料来调整风味。“我不希望握寿司的味道太浓，因为我必须在烟熏、甜味和咸味之间保持微妙的平衡，”他解释道。他给飞蚁加入了阿尔博尔辣椒，以增加它们的辣味，而给龙舌兰虫加入了阿尔博尔辣椒以平衡烟熏味。由于他只是零星使用，一次去墨西哥的旅行可以为餐厅提供很长一段时间的供应。

But it’s the sustainability of edible bugs that first attracted Tanyag to the idea. Sustainability and seasonality have always been embedded in the concept at Los Mochis – they source the best possible ingredients from the best possible, mostly local, suppliers – so introducing insects never felt outlandish. “Insects are very sustainable because they don’t use up any resources. They don’t need any facilities or big spaces with water and things like that,” he says. They’re often harvested, not farmed, in the wild where they’re considered pests. “And they’re also a very high source of protein and they have natural amino acids, which are good for the body.” So you can guzzle down that gusano guilt-free.

但吸引 Tanyag 的首先是食用昆虫的可持续性。可持续发展和季节性一直是 Los Mochis 餐厅的理念--他们从最好的供应商那里采购最好的食材，而且大部分都是当地供应商--因此引进昆虫并不觉得离奇。昆虫的可持续性非常好，因为它们不消耗任何资源。它们不需要任何设施或大面积的水源之类的东西，”他说。它们经常是在野外收获而非饲养，在那里被视为害虫。“它们还是非常高含量的蛋白质来源，而且它们含有天然氨基酸，对身体有益。”所以你可以毫无负罪感地享用那个龙舌兰虫。