There was a recent era in which both corporations and indie kitchens alike opted to express their affinity for Mexican food and culture in the form of a taco. Slip some boiled cabbage, salted pork, and mashed potatoes between the wings of a corn tortilla, and suddenly, you were no longer just an Irish food truck, but an Irish food truck tuned to the psychic wavelength of the L.A. appetite that “gets it.”
In the past year, we’ve watched chapulines—the salt-and-citrus-seasoned, comal-toasted grasshoppers most famously consumed as snacks and ingredients in Oaxaca and other parts of Mexico—spring into the local food scene as the latest in savvy nods to the city’s majority.
Chapulines are taking over as the munchie of choice in Major League ballparks and science museum gift shops across the Southwest. They’re seen chopped and speckled over French croissants in the Arts District and blended into haute cream sauces in posh Orange County beach towns.
Now, we find the crispy little critters used in a dish we can only imagine making sense to the diners of Los Angeles: chapulín-topped Chinese dumplings.
Iron Teapot Dim Sum & Bar, a 17-month-old corner of Cantonese dining in Culver City, is where you’ll encounter this synthesis of three separate cultures that fit Chinese, Vietnamese, and Oaxacan flavors into a single pork-and-shrimp shumai.