Would you eat dirt? This restaurant has dirt on the menu

Restaurants typically do their best to keep their establishments clean. And in Los Angeles, we even grade our restaurants based on cleanliness. So it came as a surprise to see a restaurant in Japan serving actual dirt on the menu. And we’re not talking about the small remnants that can cling to a piece of produce after it’s been washed. Nor the trendy “dirt” -- made with ground nuts and malt flour -- popularized by the Copenhagen restaurant Noma. It’s real dirt.

Ne Quittez Pas, a restaurant in Tokyo, is serving an entire menu devoted to dirt, reported Asian news site RocketNews24.com. The first course consists of a potato starch and dirt soup; the second, salad with dirt dressing, then an aspic with oriental clams and a top layer of sediment; and the fourth course, a dirt risotto with sea bass and burdock root.

And what’s on a dirt menu for dessert? Dirt ice cream of course, with a dirt gratin and a dirt mint tea. The cost for a meal consisting of an ingredient you can easily pick off your shoe? Around 10,000 yen, or $110, per person, according to RocketNews24.com.

But the dirt at Ne Quittez Pas is not your average gunk. The chefs at the restaurant use a special soil from dirt manufacturer Protoleaf, Shine.Yahoo.com reported. This dirt is called kuro tsuchi and it’s made of volcanic ashes, soil and plants from the Kanto District of Japan. Getting hungry yet?

No word yet on a restaurant in the U.S. that sells dirt, but it could be just a matter of time before we see the food trend here in the States. Would you eat actual dirt? Let us know in the comments below.

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