We Eat Crickets

I ordered some bugs to eat from this UK-based company called Edible Unique. They came shipped in a white envelope, to my office in Shanghai. So many bugs to choose from! We went down to our favorite spot on the Bund, our friend Jeff's dive bar I Love Shanghai [recently moved to new location]. Let him decide which bug to eat. Here's how it went...



Jeff made a blind choice for the crickets. Then, we ate them...



These were "lemongrass giant crickets with Thai spices." Good on salads. Be careful to remove the wings and legs as they're a bit sharp. Nice nutty flavor. Crunchy crickets!

(BTW, Jeff's from Seattle, and his hair isn't normally like that -- it was "wig" night at his bar).

* This source thinks Angelina Jolie's "sexy body" is partly due to her eating crickets.

* If you think eating bugs is weird, you may be in the minority. You Weirdo!

* I'm trying to get more videos posted, but it's a real challenge from China, as Youtube is often blocked or running too slow. Even now, I can't hear the sound from these videos -- leave a comment if you have trouble viewing them.

Eating Bugs at Stone Forest

Stone Forest (ShiLin), near Kunming, Yunnan, southwest China.

I'd been wanting to taste bee larvae, a Yunnan Province delicacy, ever since I heard of it years ago. They take bees nests and cook up the baby larvae, and eat it as a snack or appetizer to a full meal.



It was only our first full day in Yunnan, so I wasn't looking for it, I knew I'd get around to it at some point during the trip. We took a day trip from Kunming to the famous tourist spot the Stone Forest ("ShiLin" in Chinese). I'd seen TV clips and tourist brochures about the Stone Forest, and it just seemed like one of those really cheesy domestic tourist spots, with minority people dressed in colorful costumes, doing those silly dances for geriatric, fluorescent-hat package tour groups. And it is, but it's still a nice attraction. The stone forest is big enough to spend a few days exploring -- well, ok, if you're really into rocks, and I'm not. Geology was by far the most boring subject I had in school. But the Stone Forest was more impressive than I'd expected. Lots of nooks and crannies and crazy shapes and weird formations that are easy and fun to photograph. It was worth an afternoon's amusement at least. And the magical weather that the Kunming area is known for doesn't hurt. Vivid blue skies with playful clouds that cast an ever-changing dance of shadows and lighting conditions.



I usually like to go un-guided when I'm traveling, and because of my expectations, I steered clear of the crowd of eager tour guides dressed up in those ethnic exploitation outfits waiting outside the entrance gate. We were ready to just go in, but when I asked for a map, I was directed towards the hive of guides, where they had a stall selling funny hats, postcards, and a pony you could sit on to take pics with. I told Mom to wait, I'll just be quick and get a map and ignore the guides.



Ten minutes later I was back at the gate with a map and a hired guide. The guides all had remarkably good English -- especially for China -- and good humor. They didn't even try to persuade me into hiring them, which was quite the opposite experience I've had in almost every other major tourist destination the world over. Everyone's a bit more chilled out here in Yunnan.



We were really glad we'd hired our guide. He was patient, and didn't go on talking up a mind-numbing, buzz-killing list of mundane facts and figures. (I remember our guide at the Three Gorges Dam, talking for 2 hours about the measurements and dimensions and raw materials that related to the dam construction -- it was torture!) Nah, this guy was cool and he knew we just wanted to enjoy a carefree walk through the highlights, check out the scenery, and soak up the sun.

After about 3 hours of that we headed back out the front gate, where there's a row of shops and restaurants and tea houses near the parking lot. We did a tea-tasting of Yunnan's specialty "pu er tea" (puer, pu-er, pu-erh, pu'er, whatever) -- which is prized, like red wine, for its ability to age. I've been drinking this stuff for years, from cheap dim sum restaurant pu'er tea, to tastings of the expensive stuff, and I have to admit, I just don't get it. The green stuff is way better, IMHO. The aged stuff tastes like tree bark and dirt.

Then it was time for lunch. Oh boy the options! I've always been a big fan of exotic mushrooms, and Yunnan is known for this. They're not cheap, but the texture and flavor of these are so unique and powerfully delicious, that it's worth the splurge. There are few fresh foods that I've had that really give you a feeling that you're somewhere special, you're somewhere where you have to have this here and now, or never. Yunnan's mushrooms do that for me. Southern Cambodia's durians, in peak season, freshly fallen from the tree, comes to mind as well. Frog Hollow peaches in Northern California. Strawberries in Napa Valley. Fresh dates in Egypt. Tomatoes in Italy... ok ok ok, back to Yunnan.

There was also a magical array of edible flowers and herbs -- banana and pumpkin blossoms, field flowers of various colors, and heaps of green leafy things I'd never seen before.



So we ordered this and that. But let me get to the meaty stuff. There was a selection of bugs and insects and maggots to try. This was the time and place.



I found the honey-comb things I'd seen in the pictures, and was taking my own pictures, when the waitstaff directed me to a shelf that had trays of critters -- some alive, some dead. In the name of Weird Meat research, I ordered all of them.



First came the bees and bee larvae. (More on these on another post, Bee Larvae). These, like all the other insects and bugs we ordered, were fried in salt and pepper, and made for yummy crispy appetizers. We also ate crickets and grasshoppers and caterpillars, and some weird wormy maggot bug that we couldn't get a translation on. These were all delicious snacks, but my favorites were the crickets, reminding me of the crickets I ate in Thailand.



So the bugs were good eatin', but the highlight of the meal were the exotic Yunnan mushrooms that the area is known for. Mushrooms aren't really weird meat, but we had to give them props. If you're into bugs and mushrooms, you've got to read about the worm fungus we ate. Definitely weird, but is it meat?



Yunnan's exotic array of mushrooms

Baby Bee Larvae

Kunming, Yunnan, Southwest China. (Yunnan Province is famous for having several ethnic minority cultures)



We usually do our best to avoid places like this. You know, those restaurants that have a song-and-dance routine, and even worse, these "ethnic exploitation" places where they have these teenagers dress up in "traditional clothing" and lip-sync to obnoxious music. They act out story-dances where the boys enjoy working in the fields, and the girls bat eyelashes (with heavy mascara) and act all hopeless and cutesy. Then, after the "performance," drunken tourists go take pics with the "pretty minority girls"... and try not to notice when the "talent" runs in and out of the dressing room as fast as possible, dressed much better and more normal than the tourists themselves, yakking on mobile disco phones. And no one seems to notice that the food sucks, just like at those revolving hotel restaurants at the top of skyscrapers.



Anyway, we were exhausted when we arrived at our Kunming hotel and this restaurant would have to do tonight. Besides, they had bee larvae on the menu! Baby bees -- yum!



They looked like meal-worms, the kind you feed your pet lizard in science class. Actually fatter than that. We would also like to call them maggots. I like that word, maggots. They, like most other bugs and worms we've eaten, were deep fried with salt and pepper and other spices. Crispy and crunchy, we started chowing down on these like we'd had them a hundred times before, after an initial hesitation, provocative photo ops, and quick swigs of "Super Cool [TM]" beer. What can we say? We liked them. They're yummy little munchies. Eat'm up like popcorn.



Even mom liked them, and I was really proud of her, this being her first real weird meat experience. When I placed the order, she said no. But after a beer and watching me eat them like it ain't nuttin', she picked one up with her chopsticks and gobbled it up. Crunch crunch. Then she ate more.



I'd read somewhere that they have a subtle hint of honey flavor, but I didn't catch that nuance. Maybe there's another preparation where you get that taste?

We also had another local specialty called "Crossing The Bridge Noodles," which isn't weird, but it's tasty.

Hey, did we mention we're in Kunming? This is a cool place. Yunnan Province, Southwest China. Hotels are cheap, like in Thailand. It's famous for spring weather all year round, and what a pleasure that is after living in Shanghai. They actually have blue skies in Kunming! I also read that actor Edward Norton and his posse came here and installed solar energy panels on top of buildings around town. Maybe that'll help keep the skies blue. Actually, I was in a movie with Ed Norton. It's called A Painted Veil, and it was filmed in China. I was merely an extra, and in fact you don't see my face the whole film -- but, the final scene -- after Naomi Watts steps out of the flower shop and into the street, the last shot pans onto me as I turn around and walk off. So, you see my ass, and that's THE END.

Cicadas in Jinan

Jinan city, Shandong Province, China


Fried Cicadas

I love the sound of cicadas. I remember my first trip to Asia many years ago, mid-summer in Kyoto, Japan. I was a typical first-timer, taking pics of everything in sight. But one day I was hiking in a rural mountain area, and the sound of cicadas in the trees was so mesmerizing, I shut my camera and bought a cheap tape recorder. For the rest of the trip I recorded sounds instead of snap-shots. The sound of cicadas didn't leave my mind for months after that trip. Years later, I still remember the sound, and I look forward to it every summer I'm in Asia.



The cicadas make a different sound rhythm in China, at least in Shanghai, where I spend most of my time lately. But I still like it. It's more of a drone here, compared to the rising-falling hum-buzz of the Kyoto cicadas. Turns out there are many different varieties of cicadas, and each has their own sound.

Some cicada fans have made a website about to their favorite bugs -- Cicada Mania: "Dedicated to cicadas, the most amazing insects in the world."

I'd heard a few times that people sometimes eat these insects, but I hadn't ever seen them on the menu until my recent trip to the cold harsh north.

I had a DJ gig in a nightclub in a second-tier Chinese city called Jinan. Jinan is in Shandong province, and is, I guess, about 5 hours south of Beijing by train. At a restaurant here in Jinan, I checked out the fish tanks and vegetable crates that serve as a menu. A lot of the hotel restaurants and banquet places in China have these areas -- crates and tanks of live animals (mostly fish and seafood, but sometimes more -- more on this in another article), and sample plates of prepared dishes (sometimes plastic versions like you see everywhere in Japan). Anyway, at this Jinan restaurant, there were two items that were easily identifiable as "weird." Scorpions and cicadas. Live ones. The scorpions were really small ones, dull brown, almost colorless critters. I'd already had big black ones, and I wasn't really doing the ordering so I politely ignored them. My host did catch me looking at the cicadas crawling around in a bucket, however, and challenged me to try it. Little did he know, I'm the Weird Meat guy!



So minutes later, we had a huge plate of fried bugs. I'd say about a hundred of these little bite-size insects were deep-fried crispy. Everyone liked them. Even my friend Boya from Texas, usually not as adventurous a diner, enjoyed them.

At one point during our stay in Jinan, I suggested trying some street food. Mr. Boya wasn't into that. So we popped into the safe, global-standard KFC for some chicken nuggets -- and had to spit the first one out as it was raw in the center. Hahah, the irony. Maybe the safer stuff is on the dirty streets.

Let me be frank. Jinan is a boring town. There's not much to do there. I sulked around the new shopping mall district, disgusted with the crass new buildings and pointless, stupid shops. I did find a maze of back alleys behind these tacky new malls, that were bustling with street food. Had a nice bowl of soup with fresh hand-pulled noodles underneath an overpass. Also a really good BBQ skewer of quail eggs.

As we were running to catch our plane at the modern Jinan airport, we noticed an airport lobby restaurant had "dog meat and flesh" on the menu, under the "chicken meat and flesh" and "beef meat and flesh".

Bug Cart, Khao San Road, Bangkok

I love Bangkok. Where else can you find a transvestite selling deep-fried scorpions and giant cockroaches for tourist consumption? Consumption as in food, for people.

Khao San Road is famous as the world's backpacker mecca. Hardcore travelers lament that Khao San Road is now a big sell-out, long past its good old days of flea-bag hotels, drugs, and legends. So yeah it is, but you can still find everything you used to, and more. It's probably the most international block in the world. Travelers unload souvenirs and trade stories collected from all corners of the world. You can buy Dutch disco CDs, African drums, Guatemalan hats, and Chinese opium pipes.

You can also buy a selection of snacks from a bug cart. Crickets of various sizes, large black scorpions, meal worms, and large water bugs. But the timing never seemed right. The carts seem to appear at odd hours, so after a few days of disappointment, I'd given up on eating the bugs.

I certainly saw a few critters at our hotel. We had a few in-room geckos that were feasting on little bugs but they refused to share with us.

Then I saw her. As we were carving into a blackened catfish on a sidewalk table, an old lady rolled by with a cart of fried bugs. I got up a few minutes later to seek her out but she had vanished into the night. I was sad for 2 days and had given up all hope. Then, last night, as we were finishing up our final Pad Thai before going to bed, another cart rolled up: BUGS! The vendor, a flamboyant transvestite, was excited to help me choose the bug course. It was oddly reminiscent of ordering from a cheese cart at a fancy restaurant. Anyway, I got a small scoop of each bug, 8 of them all together. All the bugs were deep fried and sprinkled with a pepper. We ordered a few of each and sat down on the curb to analyze the taste and texture of each. Here's a photo, set next to a Singha Beer can for size demonstration.



Here's a list:

Black scorpion. Poked my lip with the stinger on accident but ate the rest of the tail in two bites. Flavorless.

Big grasshopper. Tasted grassy like some Savignon Blanc's do. Not bad.

Malengdaa water bug. Looks like a giant cockroach. This is the bug they grind into chili paste in Thailand. We picked up a small bottle of it at 7-11. Bug jam at 7-11. Anyway, the one I had wasn't very exciting. But the most difficult to place in my mouth, to be honest.

2 kinds of maggots. These were my favorites. One tasted like almonds, the other was juicy and sweet.

Crickets. Crunchy, tasted like potato chips. I could chow down on these next baseball game.

The rest were small, undefinable, maybe other kinds of crickets, or merely legs and antennii.

Eating Spiders in Cambodia

Location: Cambodia.

Spiders. Along the road north from Phnom Penh (Cambodia's capital city) to Angkor Wat (famous ancient temples), a town called Skuon is famous for edible spiders. These spiders look similar to furry North American tarantulas. There are road-side street vendors with large woks filled with oil for deep-frying the crispy critters. The spiders are breed in holes in the ground near the town.



I had been dozing off on the bus, but the dusty, frenetic road stop in Skuon jarred me awake. My Cambodian friend reminded me this was the town famous for edible spiders. He pointed out of the bus as we unboarded, to a row of street vendors standing behind large woks heated by trash-can barrel ovens. "Sometimes a few spiders get away, so watch your feet, don't want them to bite." I looked down at my Tevas sandals and shrugged, blinded by my white feet.

There they were, stacks of whole crispy-fried spiders. We ordered about 10 to share, and the vendor placed them into a plastic bag. A true road-side snack, we munched away on these as the bus drove us north to the ancient wonder of Angkor Wat. Some eat them straight like a sandwich, others pull off one or two legs at a time and eat them like french fries. My first time, I was methodical, tasting one leg at a time -- there are 8 of them, of course -- and finally eating the body in two sections. I found it easier to palate the body after the legs had been removed. I also found that a few cans of cold Angkor beer helped get me in the mood, and to wash down the grease.

There are two sections of the body, and the back with the pinchers is the best. The poison is killed when the spider is fried, but it doesn't nullify the medicinal quality -- good for coughs.

Only one of our Cambodian companions declined offers to munch on spider meat. He said he'd had enough of eating spiders to survive the Khmer Rouge years. (More on that later).

Verdict: Actually quite good! No it doesn't taste at all like fried chicken. Some think it tastes like crab, but I didn't find the resemblance. The taste itself is not strong, it's the cripsy-chewy texture that is most appealing. Make sure you have some paper napkins, as the black juice from these is greasy and it doesn't look good on your goatee. I've eaten about 10 insect-type creatures now, and these spiders are my favorite.