The operator of one of Seoul's most celebrated restaurants has been fined for serving a dessert topped with ants, an insect that is not approved for consumption under South Korean food safety law. Evett, a two-Michelin-star restaurant in the affluent Gangnam district, saw its operating company fined 10 million won, about £5,400, while its chief executive, Ginny Kim, was fined 15 million won. The sentences fall well short of what prosecutors had demanded. The prosecution sought a one-year prison term for the chief executive and a 20 million won fine for the company, arguing that the restaurant had built part of its reputation on dishes the law does not permit. ## Why The Court Punished But Did Not Jail Judge Lee Se-chang of Seoul's western district court made clear the offence was serious. The offence was "by no means light", he said, citing the length of time the dishes had been sold, the restaurant's use of them to promote itself, and tests that found heavy metals above permitted levels in the ants. The judge balanced those factors against mitigating circumstances. He noted that the defendants admitted the offence, that the chief executive had no previous criminal record under the food safety law, that the number of ants served appeared lower than prosecutors had calculated, and that the restaurant no longer uses ants. Ants are used as an ingredient in the United States and Europe, and the restaurant appeared not to have realised they were not permitted in South Korea, he said. Both sides now have seven days to appeal the ruling. ## How The Ant Dessert Reached 12,000 Diners The case traces back to April 2021. Prosecutors said the restaurant imported dried ants from the US and Thailand by post and served three to five of them atop a sorbet made with sikhye, a sweet Korean rice drink, continuing until January 2025. Prosecutors estimated the dessert was served to 12,274 customers, using 49,096 ants, for total revenue of about 120 million won. Lawyers disputed that figure in court, arguing that only about 60 percent of customers accepted the ant topping when it was offered. The restaurant also noted that only a small number of dishes on its 15-course menu included ants, and that restaurants in countries including Denmark, the United Kingdom and Australia use ants as an ingredient. The food and drug safety ministry launched its investigation after seeing mentions of the ant dishes in blog posts and social media, a reminder that in South Korea viral food culture moves faster than regulatory approval. ## A Chef Not Charged, A Law That Stands Evett was founded by the Australian chef Joseph Lidgerwood, who has appeared on the Netflix cooking competition Culinary Class Wars and is the restaurant's public face. He was not a defendant and was not charged, because under South Korean food safety law the legal duties fall on the person registered as operating the business. That person is Ginny Kim, Lidgerwood's wife, who was named as a defendant alongside the operating company. South Korea approves only 10 insect species as food ingredients, including grasshoppers, mealworms and silkworm pupae. Businesses wishing to use an unapproved insect must obtain temporary approval from the ministry of food and drug safety, a step the restaurant did not take. Violating the law carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison or a 50 million won fine, meaning the court's fines represent a fraction of what the statute allows. Insect-eating is neither new nor unusual in South Korea. Beondegi, steamed silkworm pupae, has been sold from street carts for decades and remains a nostalgic popular snack, which makes the country's strict approval list less about disgust than about controlled safety testing. The structure of the penalties is itself telling. The chief executive's fine of 15 million won exceeds the company's 10 million won, an inversion that underlines how the law concentrates responsibility in the registered operator rather than the corporate brand. For business owners in South Korea's hospitality sector, the message is that the registration on paper is where liability lands. The timeline also matters. The ant dishes were served from April 2021 until January 2025, nearly four years in which a two-star restaurant's signature provocation circulated openly on blogs and social media before regulators acted. The case therefore reads as much as an enforcement backlog catching up with fine dining as a judgment about one dessert. The verdict lands at a moment when Korean gastronomy has never been more prominent internationally, with Korean fine dining drawing global attention and Netflix competitions turning chefs into celebrities. For the country's ambitious restaurant scene, the case draws a bright line: creative sourcing cannot outrun the approval process, and the registered operator, not the famous chef, carries the legal risk. For Evett itself, the fine closes a chapter rather than the restaurant. The ants are gone from the menu, the court accepted the offence was not committed in bad faith, and the two Michelin stars that made the dessert famous in the first place remain the establishment's to defend.