Fried Ants a Feature of China Health-Food Menu

One of the best parts of a meal at Peking’s new Longevity Restaurant is looking for the fried ants among the sesame seeds.

The crunchy little critters, highly recommended by the management for preventing arthritis, are just one of the attractions at the restaurant that proclaims that “medicine is food and food is medicine.”

“The main difference between this restaurant and other restaurants is that every one of our dishes has medicine in it,” said manager Lu Dexin. “Even the drinks and the cigarettes are medicinal.”

Business is suffering because many people think the food must have the bitter taste associated with most Chinese medicines. Not so, Lu said.

“We don’t put much medicine in,” she said. “Not enough to make the taste obvious, but enough to have a very beneficial effect.”

The ants are a special large breed native to northeastern China, jet-black and prized for their medicinal qualities. They are shipped in by the company that runs the restaurant, the Peking Number Six Medicine Factory, fried in oil, mixed with black sesame seeds and used to coat a walnut delicacy served toward the beginning of a meal.

The restaurant, which opened in early August, is expensive--an ordinary meal for local people costs about $3.50 a head, the equivalent of a week’s salary for many workers. For their money, they get what are billed as dishes prepared to medicinal recipes created for the emperors of the Mongol dynasty founded in 1271 by Kublai Khan.

Such dishes were popular with China’s emperors, many of whom were obsessed with the idea of longevity and immortality. However, at least one Son of Heaven died of poisoning from the very potions he hoped would prolong his life.

The Longevity Restaurant does not serve pork, the staple Chinese meat, because it is considered too fatty, and generally substitutes deer meat, which the management said was especially good for the kidneys and muscles.

A typical meal also includes quail (good for lung complaints and shortness of breath), black chicken (improves blood circulation) and a stone-cold mixture of rice and barley (which the waitresses swore was good for the complexion).