Tucked away in an understated storehouse on the tip of Christianshavn island, Copenhagen's Noma serves up the worlds best food (Restaurant Magazine's annual S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants). With prices starting at a cool 850 Krone/£100, and bookings required months in advance, the restaurant showcases the elite of Scandinavian style, class and ingenuity. Seasonal, local ingredients are smoked, pickled and salted, before being combined to culminate with immaculate results.
Although I didn't make it through the door, I did try some of their food. Well, sort of. Because I came to Denmark to track down Lasius fuligonosus, one of the key ingredients to the plethora of dishes crafted in the hallowed kitchens at Noma. A dollop of yogurt is added to a small water biscuit before being topped with... an ant!
I imagine that similar to myself, the supplier of the larders (apparently an amateur naturalist too) arms himself with some waterproofs and collection vials, before heading north of the city to the temperate forests, heathlands and bogs of Zealand to find colonies to harvest. Naturally, since this is Noma, the ant in question is the most elegant I have ever seen. Shiny and jet black, with a delicate narrow petiole (waist) separating its spherical abdomen and thorax, L. fuligonosus can also be characterised by a fresh lemongrass taste.
If that wets your taste buds, then it is best to find these delectable invertebrates in established woodlands, given that they nest in old tree stumps, creating labyrinth like tubes and caverns from chewed wood and saliva pulp. We found one at Bøllemose, a stunning bogland known amongst myrmecologists for its ant diversity, with further treats of edible clover, fungi, cranberries and bilberries hidden amongst the sphagnum moss and carnivorous sundew plants. A few more treats to accompany our arthropod amuse-bouche. A quick lick releases the initial blush of lemony defensive chemicals, whilst a swift crunch spreads the flavour to the roof of your mouth and around the palate.
With rises in food prices, predictions are being made that insects will be adopted more and more to supplement proteins in our diet. Across the harbour in a houseboat, the Nordic Food Lab, also established by Rene Redzepi of Noma, examines our potential as insectivores, with ecologists, anthropologists and gastronomists all working to create the main course.
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