Pestaurant by Rentokil is back!

To celebrate the hard work behind successful pest control, Rentokil will unveil South Africa’s first ‘Pop-Up Pestaurant’ at Johannesburg’s Cresta Shopping Centre on 3 June. Everyone is welcome to come and give “entomophagy” (the eating of insects) a try.

Turning up the heat on pests

At the Pestaurant, for one day only, experts will be serving up delicacies like roasted locusts, meal-worms and buffalo worms and pest-inspired dishes such as cream cheese and cricket wraps, cricket crostini, salsa mealworm and locust canapés, all of them perfectly edible and guaranteed to tantalise the taste buds.

A number of professionally-trained Rentokil experts will also be on hand to discuss the food being served and to answer questions about insects and how to avoid problems associated with various insect pests.

On top of providing edible insects for the public to sample, Rentokil will also be running an Instagram competition at the event where visitors can stand in line to win a Pestaurant apron and a “Make your Pestaurant at Home” kit. Rentokil has 3 of these to give away to the visitors who upload the 3 most liked photos on Instagram using the hash tag #ieatbugs2015.

Considering the fact that insects have a much higher ‘feed conversion rate’ than conventional live-stock (which emits 18 percent of global greenhouse-gases*), farming edible insects may soon be-come a respectable alternative to beef, pork and chicken protein! As farming edible insects requires less space, energy and water, it automatically reduces the impact on the environment.

The argument is supported by respected bodies like the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organisation, who identified insects as a potentially valuable food source for the rapidly-growing global community, seeing that they are rich in protein, zinc, calcium and iron, whilst being low in fat.

With its Global Pestaurant Rentokil delves deeper into the concept of eating insects that are termed ‘pests’. Pigeons, despite being a nuisance for many city-dwellers, are already recognised as a deli-cacy on many Michelin-starred menus. In Japan, fried rice-field grasshoppers (inago) feature on some restaurant menus, while roasted weevil larvae (gusano) is a favourite amongst diners in Mexico.

To celebrate the global nature of its Pestaurant, Rentokil will we be collecting the best pest recipes from participating countries and compiling them into a downloadable Pest Dish Cookery Book, says Rentokil Initial SA’s Category Manager, Nathalie Leblond. She says their Pest Dish Cookery Book idea was created in response to very positive trial runs at various events throughout 2014.

Pestaurant is a fun campaign to raise awareness around common pests and the benefits associated with eating insects. Our Rentokil experts deal with millions of pests on behalf of people all around the world. As a global organisation, we gain knowledge from colleagues all over the world. It gives us the leverage to develop novel ways of dealing with pests in a South African context We know what a problem pests like ants, crickets, cockroaches, termites, mice, rats and so on can be, and are here to help residents and business owners to remain pest-free in the safest way.

Rentokil’s Pop-Up Pestaurant will be open from 12:00 on 3 June 2015 and photographs of the event will be available upon request from 12:00.
Please contact Phillip van Heerden at Affinity Strategic Communications with requests for imagery.

Pestaurant Menu in full:

Savoury

• Roasted Crickets
• Crispy Mealworms
• Plain roasted Buffalo worms
• Crunchy Locusts

Sweet

• Chocolate-covered mixed bugs
• Scorpion Lollipops
• Ant Candy

For more info have a look at the Rentokil website or follow them on Twitter (#Pestaurant)