As a growing number of chefs put bugs on the menu, Ben Whitford samples his first ‘entomophagic’ meal and talks to the edible-insect entrepreneurs hoping to convert the rest of us to the environmental and nutritional benefits of eating insects….
The other day, at a busy restaurant in the middle of Washington, D.C, I had bugs for lunch. Sitting at a polished table in Oyamel – a high-end Mexican eatery a stone’s throw from the Capitol – I was presented with the house specialty: a fresh corn tortilla cradling a fist-sized heap of glistening chapulines, the roasted grasshoppers prized as a delicacy in the Oaxaca region of Mexico.
Reader, I ate them. The carapaces were disconcertingly crunchy, but the taste was subtle – mostly chipotle chilli and lime, with a pleasant nuttiness from the grasshoppers themselves. Later, after picking the legs from my teeth, I chatted with Oyamel head chef Colin King, who sells two or three dozen tacos de chapulines a day to curious diners. Many guests first try them on a dare, King said, only to order second and third helpings. “People generally end up liking the flavour,” he adds.
Grasshopper tacos won’t replace crab cakes and steaks as D.C. power-lunch staples, but the dish’s popularity points to the gradual mainstreaming of entomophagy, the practice of eating bugs.