When you order a burger at a restaurant, you expect to be offered toppings like cheese or bacon. What you don’t expect is to be asked, “Would you like some fried crickets and mealworms with that?” But food made with insects, like the bug-covered burger shown here, is exactly what’s on the menu at pop-up “Pestaurants” around the U.S.
The exterminator company Ehrlich came up with the idea of mixing creepy-crawlies and gourmet food to promote its pest-control business. Ehrlich has been hosting Pestaurant events in major cities around the country, like Boston and Washington, D.C., since 2014.
The idea of eating bugs might make some people queasy. But entomophagy is common around the world. For thousands of years, people have sautéed, fried, boiled, and baked more than 2,000 species of bugs. An insect’s flavor can range from nutty to shrimp-like. “Their flavor also depends on the spices used in their preparation,” says Louis Sorkin, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Bugs are highly nutritious. That’s led some chefs in the U.S. to begin cooking up insects as a healthy food option. Pound for pound, bugs contain more protein than typical meats, like beef, chicken, or pork. Raising insects is also better for the environment. Doing so requires fewer resources and less space than livestock and poultry farming.
Still, biting into a burger topped with a pile of crunchy bugs might be hard for some people to swallow. Sorkin says that many people are more open to the idea of eating foods created with insect flour made from dried, ground-up bugs. Cricket cake, anyone?