A two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Seoul has been fined for using ants as a dessert garnish, in a case that turned on which insects South Korean law recognises as food.
The owner of Evett, in the South Korean capital, was fined 15 million won (£8,144; $10,965) for violating the Food Sanitation Act, while the company operating the restaurant was fined 10 million won, according to local media reports.
Ants are not among the ten insect species approved for human consumption in South Korea. The approved list includes grasshoppers, locusts and some silkworms.
Prosecutors had sought a one-year prison term for the owner along with a 20 million won fine. The judge is reported to have taken into account that the owner admitted the charge and had no prior criminal record.
The judge is also reported as saying that, as well as the food-standards breach, testing detected heavy metals exceeding standards in the ants, meaning the "culpability is not light".
The owner was said to have been unaware that serving ants was prohibited in South Korea, given that they are used as food elsewhere. The practice came to light after the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety found online reviews accompanied by photographs.
The ministry said the owner had sprinkled three to five ants on certain dishes to give them a "sour taste" over a period of nearly four years, amounting to approximately 49,000 ants used as a garnish. Most were imported from the United States, with some coming from Thailand.
The owner argued that the ants were used in a "small part" of the restaurant's 15-course menu, and that diners were told they could choose a non-ant alternative topping.
Ants are eaten, and sometimes valued as a delicacy, in several Asian, African and Latin American cultures. Weaver ants and their eggs are used in Thai and Cambodian cooking, and in Colombia queen ants are as prized as caviar.
It is the geography of the case that repays study. The ants were bought in the United States and in Thailand, where they were food. They were then flown to Seoul, where they were not food. Nothing happened to the ants in between.
The Questionable Times' analysts note that this establishes edibility as an administrative property rather than a biological one. An ant is food in one jurisdiction and a breach of the Food Sanitation Act in another, and the transition occurs at cruising altitude, unobserved, somewhere over the Pacific.
The Department of Unnecessary Research accordingly advises chefs that the surest route to culinary innovation is no longer the kitchen but the list. Ten species are currently approved in South Korea. Everything else on Earth is, for the moment, garnish that has not yet been filed.