NEW ORLEANS — The menu includes crickets and wax
worms on toothpick skewers for dipping in a fountain of melted
chocolate, along with "tarsal toffee" made with bug legs and
mealworms and fudge infused with crickets and marshmallows.
What looked like a Halloween trick was actually an array of
treats being served up Saturday at the Audubon Butterfly Garden and
Insectarium in New Orleans.
The 23,000-square-foot facility is the largest free-standing
museum in the United States dedicated to insects. It houses
thousands of live bugs, including beetles, cockroaches, wasps,
bees, ants and termites. It also has a butterfly exhibit created to
resemble a Japanese garden.
Insect-infused cuisine is also a huge draw. Thousands annually
visit the museum's Bug Appetit kitchen, where six-legged critters
and worms are cooked and served.
There is a Tiny Termite Café with bug-free foods for the
less-adventurous eaters.
"We get every range of reaction in here," said Zack Lemann, the
museum's animal and visitor programs manager. "There are people who
come here knowing about Bug Appetit, and they come to eat the bugs.
We also have people who have trepidation and anxiety. Some just
won't try it."
Lemann said the FDA allows 60 or more microscopic insect
fragments for each 100 grams of chocolate — so it's not a huge leap
to just go ahead and have a whole bug.
The chocolate-infused bug fare was being offered as a special
"treat" alongside the museum's year-round offerings of chocolate
"chirp" cookies — made with, yes, crickets — sugared wax worms and
spicy Cajun crickets.
"I wish I could get her to eat vegetables like she eats bugs,"
said Val Russell of her 8-year-old daughter, Porter, who ate three
chocolate-dipped wax worms and went back for seconds of the
cricket-infused fudge
