I didn’t take this picture, it’s from The Black Ant’s twitter page.

When I first read about entomophagy (the practice of eating insects), it was through an NPR article (The Joys and Ethics of Insect Eating) that was introducing the reader to the company Little Herds. One thing that Robert Nathan Allen, the founder of Little Herds, mentioned was the greatest barrier to Americans eating insects what the “ick factor”. The article, as a whole, was very compelling. After reading it, I promptly went to the Little Herds website and bought the chocolate chip cookie mix and some of the cricket flour.

Since buying these, I’ve made chocolate chip cookies, bread, and a potpie with cricket flour. At first, Jason was not a fan of this. To be fair, I started off with the cookies which was a mistake. The cookies were good. But Jason might be obsessed with chocolate chip cookies and didn’t appreciate the change in flavor (even though it’s slight). The bread and potpie were much easier to get by him.

Anyway, two weeks ago, my husband (Jason) and I went to New York City to visit a friend of his (Tom). On Saturday, Jason, Tom, Jason’s brother (Greg) and I went to a restaurant I’ve wanted to go to for a while. The Black Ant is a Mexican restaurant that offers traditional and “uniquely sourced ingredients” from Mexico. This includes grasshoppers. Grasshoppers!

I have been cooking with cricket flour for awhile now, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten into entomophagy. I’ve always wanted to try more, and there’s actually a restaurant in DC that has grasshopper tacos, but I haven’t made it there yet.

Anyway, I told everyone that this is where I wanted to go, and told them why. It was an interesting social experiment. Jason already knew I wanted to go here, and supported the idea because he also believes in finding alternative/additional sources of proteins for the world’s growing population. Unsurprisingly, Greg and Tom were also ok with it. I would describe both of them as adventurous eaters.

We got to The Black Ant and it was crazy busy. I really wanted to eat there so we decided to eat at the bar. When we got our food everything looked delicious. Both Greg and I ordered the Chapulines en su tierra (grasshopper tacos). I made a mistake here because I didn’t ask the bartender what else came on the tacos – I was too excited about the idea of eating grasshoppers. The tacos were covered in sour cream, which isn’t great for me since I have a dairy allergy. Jason agreed to switch meals with me, but first I tried a couple of the grasshoppers that weren’t covered in sour cream. They were good! Much smaller than I thought they would be, but very crunchy and full of flavor.

Jason happily ate the taco and agreed that they were very flavorful – a bit on the spicy side which is why there was so much sour cream. He did point out that while everything tasted good, your started to realize after awhile that you were eating grasshoppers. At one point he got a wing stuck in his teeth. All that being said, he enjoyed the tacos and I think he would eat them again. I was only able to have two or three of the crickets so I’m not sure if I would have had the same reaction. Maybe insects are like trying your first beer or glass of wine. It grows on you after awhile.

I’m sure this won’t be the last venture into entomophagy. Jason and I both acknowledge the importance of finding new protein sources for a planet whose population is increasingly growing. There are also a lot of important (and positive) environmental implications in farming insects.