When life gives you crickets, eat them and try not to gag

My morning coffee came with an unusual side dish today: salted, roasted crickets.

Joel, a barista at Pastry Art in Downtown Sarasota, was offering them to customers. At first I thought it was a joke, like he caught a bunch of unsavory bugs and was trying to gross out his favorite customers before throwing them out.

Nope.

He had a plastic baggie full of dark brown insects – legs still attached. I still thought he was joking until he popped one in his mouth and munched away. I almost gagged, but apparently he’s not alone when it comes to snacking on the bugs. You can buy packs of 24 seasoned crickets on Amazon. There are dozens of cricket-farm start-up companies throughout Europe and North America, trying to make the insects as normal a cuisine here as they are in parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Joel wouldn’t tell me where he got his, which would have been a red flag for any sane person.

But some how I persuaded an intern and three other reporters to try them with me.

You can watch us eat the critters here:

The verdict? They were definitely salty, but not nearly as crunchy as I expected. Imagine the consistency if a crisp peanut and a raisin had a baby.

The taste was weird. Really weird. Like some type of nut that had either gone bad in some way or was soaked in some semi-gross marinade. The saltiness wore away, and I was left with a weird, bad, nut-like, yet tangy aftertaste.

Thank God one of our interns had the foresight to bring chocolate.

Here are some photos from the culinary adventure: