Top chefs brace for a record El Niño: ants by request only in Brazil, cocoa-free chocolate in Copenhagen, warm-water fish in Japan.

Come sit, baby, because even the fanciest kitchens in the world are learning what every nonna already knew: the weather sets the table. At the Apapaxoa gastronomic festival on Mexico's Caribbean coast, some of the world's top chefs told AFP, in a story carried by France 24, how they're rethinking menus as United Nations experts predict an exceptionally strong El Niño, the climate pattern that brings global changes in winds and rainfall. Brazilian chef Alex Atala, whose Sao Paulo restaurant D.O.M. draws on the Amazon, says he now adjusts his annual menu "almost weekly" because certain products aren't available. "Ants, for example, this year are only available for customers who specifically ask to try them," he said. Flooded roads and wildfires can delay deliveries until fresh food arrives past its prime. Near Valencia, where Spanish chef Quique Dacosta cooks, torrential rain in 2024 decimated the plots used to grow Albufera rice, an essential paella ingredient, AFP notes, and stormy seasons empty his dining room. "It's going to rain a lot and people just don't come anymore," he said. In the Yucatan, chef Roberto Solis said this is the first year without hurricanes in the Mexican Caribbean, and "Hurricanes carry moisture and move ocean currents and plankton," which matters for his seafood. And in Copenhagen, Rasmus Munk's Alchemist is making a "non-chocolate" from brewer's spent grains because, he said, "the chocolate market is also under pressure." Now, I'm not putting ants on my Sunday table anytime soon. But the lesson travels right down to a home kitchen. Cook what's good this week, not what the recipe card demanded last year, and waste nothing, not even the grain left over from the beer. Those chefs call it resilience. Around here we call it supper.