The grasshopper is open 5 hours and 30 minutes a day, 3 days a week. The lunch break is 2 hours. The rest of the time is dinner time. On average there are about 6 dishes on the menu, sometimes with special menus. The wine list is relatively short. It’s hard to define what a food and wine restaurant is, but now the food mostly has a Japanese bent. And every night a heavy metal soundtrack plays from the open kitchen and other chefs hum along as they prepare their next dish. Grasshopper himself is thorough, uncompromising, and unapologetic, which makes him so playful and wonderful.
If Locust proves one thing, it’s that the days of food and wine restaurants doing their best to attract every possible customer are officially over. You no longer have to endure long and arduous hours as we offer a variety of menus to suit all possible preferences. For chef Trevor Moran (whose line-up includes Nashville’s The Catbird Seat and Copenhagen’s Noma), Locust, which began as a dumpling and noodle pop-up during the pandemic, has always, in many ways, been a renaissance of industry expectations.
At the Locust, publications are bustling and office hours are short, but there is a wonderful hospitality at the heart of the hotel. There are no servers. Instead, each chef comes out of the restaurant’s open kitchen and brings you a dish prepared just for you. They’ll often kneel down at your table to explain the dish to you, and you might even pick up a brief conversation about the whole thing. A fiery energy flows from the kitchen throughout the food and wine restaurant.
And there was food, too. Once seated, don’t be fooled by the simplicity and lack of rectangular menu cards to guide you. It could read “bef tartare” (with the option to add “lots of caviar”), but Locust’s interpretation is far from a subtle dish of raw protein served with toast. Moran and his team grill “really, really good beef” and season it generously with salt, mustard oil, and house-made horseradish oil so that the flavor comes from two different ones a kind of heat. He arrives at the table with a pile of sparkling caviar and a delicately wrapped bowl of white rice topped with smoked egg custard. Next to it was a small bowl of freeze-dried capers that Moran had once made. Throw in the freeze dryer to dry overnight. The result is so bright and clear salt that you wonder why not all the capers are freeze-dried. The idea is to hand-roll the tartare, adding protein, rice and capers to the seaweed in the best ratio.
Simply called the “red shrimp pouch,” shrimp toast is a thick, moist combination that will linger in your dreams for weeks. Moran and his team make crayfish mousse on white bread, seasoned with white pepper and lemongrass (specifically cut off the peel). The mosaic-top bread is then dipped in tempura batter and fried until golden and crispy. Like Nashville’s most popular dish, the hot chicken, the shrimp toast is served on a prawn head straight from the skillet and accompanied by a homemade sweet chili sauce.
The dumplings, whose shells are transparent and thin, allowing you to stuff, seal, and organize, cannot be ignored. They curl up in the steamer basket, waiting to be plucked with a pair of lips. Then there’s the ultimate kakiguri, a shaved ice dessert wonder that Moran and his team literally finished off. Rather than presenting desserts as giant snowdrifts topped with wigs, Locust creates more structured desserts by shaping them into loaf pans (more recently custom ceramic bowls made by Sarah Sehat). Experience every element of texture and flavor in every spoon.
All contents of the menu are subject to change in Locust. Moran is now focusing on dumpling fillings made with leaner pork and leaner lamb. He also makes Irish brown soda bread with homemade butter and takes his team on research trips to Ireland. In a few months, Locust might even become an Irish restaurant where dumplings and kakigori leave the rearview mirror. The most important thing to him is the freedom to continue growing. “It still feels like a pop-up in our own permanent kitchen,” says Moran. “It’s lovely.”
It’s All in the Details
Locust’s Beef Tarte reinterprets a classic dish, reinterpreting elements of the original (crispy toast, tender beef, rich egg yolks, salty capers) in a handcrafted form. Nuri sheets are full of umami. The capers are freeze-dried for a satisfying crunch and savory flavor, while the custard-stuffed smoked egg pickles provide a creamy foil. The proportions of the elements are what you make – each guest can choose their own adventure.
Delicate Dumplings
Moran and his team fold each order of green onions into a thick, chewy envelope. It must be ordered if it is on the menu.
A Fancy Toast
For shrimp toast, bread stuffed with shrimp mousse is dipped in tempura batter, fried, then glazed with a sweet chilli sauce.
Don’t Skip Dessert
This kakiguri gets its unique shape by mixing it with bread. It came back to the plate and dramatically
Ham It Up
If chicken with horseradish sauce looks like a thin sheet of ham, that’s because there’s a twist. The “Ham” is made from salted tuna loin.
