Deep-fried tarantula, anyone? Lacey hosts Bug Chef, who makes insects into delicacies
EDITOR’S NOTE: David George Gordon has had to reschedule his event in Lacey to Aug. 19. The information box has been updated to reflect that.
David George Gordon, better known as The Bug Chef, wants you to eat bugs.
Gordon of Shoreline will be cooking and serving crickets, locusts and other insects Thursday, July 22, in Lacey as part of the city’s outdoor summer entertainment.
That might sound disgusting, but Gordon, author of “The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook,” disagrees. He brags about bugs, which are filled with protein and have way less environmental impact than, say, steak.
“They’re a kind of superfood,” he told The Olympian.
In more than two decades proselytizing about pests, he has made several TV appearances, including on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.”
“He called me a freak,” Gordon said.
But Gordon said bugs are staple foods in many cultures, and those who don’t regularly put insects on the menu are the unusual ones.
“We’re in the minority,” he said.
That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but according to a 2013 report by the Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations, more than 2 billion people — one quarter of the world’s population — regularly consume bugs on purpose.
Gordon, a prolific science writer who found a second career as The Bug Chef after his 1998 bug cookbook took off, isn’t necessarily one of them. He rarely sits down to a dinner of Orthopteran Orzo, a pasta dish studded with baby crickets, or Sheesh Kabobs, which combine marinated locusts or grasshoppers with bell peppers and onions.
“I have on a couple of occasions, but mostly, I enjoy doing this for other people,” he said. “They’re surprised, because they wouldn’t think these are appealing dishes.”
But whether the dishes are appealing is up for debate. Jeanette Sieler of Lacey Parks, Culture and Recreation sampled a fried cricket last time Gordon cooked in Lacey. “I probably wouldn’t eat one again,” she told The Olympian.
Kids are more willing than adults to bite into bugs, Gordon said.
So what do bugs taste like? Grasshoppers taste something like green peppers, he said, and orthopterans might remind you of shrimp.
The latter flavor makes sense, because edible insects are closely related to crustaceans — an important note because if you’re allergic to shrimp, crab or lobster, you shouldn’t sample Gordon’s goodies.
Though he sincerely hopes that everyone other than the allergic will try one of the four dishes he plans to prepare in Lacey, Gordon won’t force anyone, of course.
But The Olympian’s research on entomophagy (the scientific term for bug eating) turned up a fact that might disturb the squeamish:
You’ve already eaten bugs.
The Food and Drug Administration allows a certain amount of bugs and bug parts in foods from spinach to chocolate, as Scientific American’s Kyle Hill reported in 2013.
“Total up all the food you eat over the course of a lifetime, and I’d be surprised if we couldn’t trace a cringe-worthy percentage back to bugs,” Hill wrote.
You didn’t notice the creatures, it seems, because they were too small to see or taste. But they didn’t hurt you — and they and their kin, Gordon contends, might just be the answer to the question of how to feed the planet’s ever-growing population of humans.
The Bug Chef
- What: The Bug Chef, David George Gordon of Shoreline, will demonstrate how to cook locusts, crickets and other bugs — and offer samples to taste — as part of Lacey’s Play in the Parks series.
- When: 2 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 19
- Where: Woodland Creek Park, 6729 Pacific Ave. SE, Lacey
- Tickets: Free, with registration required
- More information: http://www.ci.lacey.wa.us/living-in-lacey/the-community/arts-and-events
This story was originally published July 20, 2021 at 5:00 AM.