Rebecca L. Root is a multimedia journalist based in Bangkok, Thailand.
The rows of plastic bags contained crickets, cockchafers, grasshoppers, worms, larvae and some beetles. They crawled up the sides of their cellophane prisons, trying to escape. I tried to suppress a shudder.
The northeastern region of Isan in Thailand is as far east as you can go before the Mekong River and the border with Laos. People here consume bugs the way Americans eat potato chips. They are served at breakfast, lunch and dinner and often carried around as a midday snack. Many people forage for them themselves, venturing a few times a week into the lush jungle landscape. Others simply stop by the nearest “jungle market” like the one I visited recently with the chef Weerawat “Num” Triyasenawat. These markets host dozens of vendors who display local insect delicacies by the hundred on plastic tables for shoppers to stop, peruse and munch.
On the day Num took me for a tour of one such market, he was looking for produce for his restaurant, Samuay & Sons. Located in the Isan city of Udon Thani, the small, rustic dining room serves a seasonal Isan tasting menu that frequently includes regional insect delicacies.
The main feature of that season was ant eggs. In both the markets I visited with Num, hundreds of the pearly white nuggets were fanned out on banana leaves or plates and sold for 100 baht ($3) per plate. Num would inspect them before turning to the packets of crickets and grasshoppers. Num’s passion project, complementing his restaurants in Bangkok and Udon Thani, is called the Mahnoi Food Lab, where he experiments with fermenting different creepy crawlies in large glass jars that stew in the heat and slowly turn into pungent liquids. Often, the results are incorporated into the menu at Samuay & Sons or distributed to other restaurants around the country.
Together, we navigated the aisles of the jungle market under a canopy of corrugated iron. While I found it oppressively hot, a fan in hand to keep the beads of sweat away, Num was not perturbed. The smell of raw meat mingled with fresh mango and spices. Most of the vendors — women who forage and farm in the surrounding area — knew the prestigious chef and were pleased to offer for his inspection what they were selling that day: herbs, beetles, diced cow’s placenta marinating in buckets of ice.
As Num chatted to each of them in Thai, I became aware of the vendors’ bemusement at the Westerners he had in tow. Far off the tourist trail, this wasn’t a spot where they’d typically find a foreigner. And they were well aware that bugs aren’t in the typical farang diet. I tried to fix my face to disguise the horror at the prospect of potentially having to consume a worm or ant egg or beetle larva, instead opting to outwardly display an appreciation for the local culture. I politely declined each time a bamboo worm, cicada or live grasshopper was offered up. The locals laughed, knowing all too well that this farang lacked the stomach for their daily diet.
It’s not just foreigners who balk at the insects in Isan. Even elsewhere in Thailand, people don’t have the same penchant for creepy crawlies as they do here in the north. Much of the rest of Thailand in fact raises a skeptical eyebrow to Isan’s love of insects, but it may turn out to be that they’re on to something in Isan.
“People in Isan consume bugs the way Americans eat potato chips.”
The Case For Eating The Creepy Crawlies
Isan is historically poorer than most of the rest of Thailand, and insects have long been a staple in the local diet as a result. They cost nothing to capture and are a cheaper source of protein than pork or beef. “In the northeast area of Thailand, people eating insects is the culture. It’s normal,” Dr. Yupa Hanboonsong, a professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at Khon Kaen University, told me.
“People eat anything that moves,” Num agreed. “We are so related to what nature gives us in each season.” Most people toss ants into a stir fry, he explained. Or a tom yum soup, for extra flavor. The ants are acidic, with a sharp, sour tang, offering an alternative to lime.
In a world where temperatures are rising, where people are becoming more climate-conscious and more invested in their health, could such a tradition of eating insects spread elsewhere? The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization hopes so. It has been encouraging people to eat insects since at least 2003, recognizing that our current food systems are broken and that insects are a valuable source of nutrients.
The production of meat, a primary source of protein for many, is responsible for generating 60% of carbon emissions related to food production. Insects, however, generate little carbon and, depending on the species, are quite healthy. Research shows that insects act as a source of fat, vitamins and minerals. A couple handfuls of crickets, for example, contain almost 30 grams of protein, more than in a chicken breast, according to Warangkana Srichamnong, a researcher at the Institute of Nutrition at Mahidol University, on the outskirts of Bangkok.
With the U.N. calling for an overhaul of food systems, insects — as reluctant as I am to imagine a future where my chicken is replaced with cicadas — could be a part of that transformation. And Thailand, home to one of the largest insect populations (there are at least 270 known species), could play an important role in leading the way.
Srichamnong is already working with Thailand’s National Bureau of Agricultural Commodity and Food Standards to test if each species is safe to eat and export. She’s also collaborating with local governments across Thailand on school meal projects that integrate the likes of beetles and mealworms into Thai dishes, hoping that targeting young children could help change attitudes in parts of Thailand less exposed to insect-eating. Her work inside the lab is also focused on exploring the nutritional value of other insects to share globally.
When I visited her, there was a row of at least a dozen freezers in her university department’s corridors. Out she pulled frost-covered beetles, cicadas and grasshoppers, laying them in a collection of petri dishes. These came from the north, where her team spends time foraging for insects to be frozen and transported to Bangkok for experimentation. Certain insects, their research suggests, simply shouldn’t be consumed. Like mosquitoes — there is a risk that they carry dengue or malaria. But others show significant promise as a healthy snack if cooked in a nutritionally rich way. Srichamnong is working with a number of chefs who are trying to serve them to those who, like me, are deterred by the idea of crunching on bugs’ wings, eyes and legs.
Part of the challenge is tackling the idea that insect consumption is only for poor communities. That’s where high-end chefs like Num come in. They are able to elevate local cuisine and showcase innovative new recipes, giving bugs an upgrade into the fine dining world rather than leaving them out in night market food carts.
“Insects generate little carbon and, depending on the species, are quite healthy.”
Insects Go Gourmet
From the table closest to the glass-fronted kitchen at Akkee, a restaurant in northern Bangkok, the chef Sittikorn Chantop can see exactly what his eight or so staff are working on ahead of the onslaught of service. Most are focused on creating traditional Thai dishes — papaya salad or panang curry — that chef Ou, as he goes by, has honed using centuries-old recipes. But some are crafting one of the 20 insect tasting dishes he has on his menu.
Most — such as subterranean ants, which Ou describes as tasting like Parmesan cheese, and cockchafers — are simply fried in their own fat on an open flame and served with nothing but a sprinkle of salt. Some, however, such as young cicadas or crickets, are ground using a mortar and pestle — it’s an appliance-free restaurant — to make a relish that will accompany a basket of leafy greens. Glimmering under the heat lamp in little ceramic dishes, they don’t present as my ideal meal, but each, Ou tells me, has a unique flavor that can be appreciated.
For those who are trepidatious like me, Ou recommends ant eggs as the ideal starting point. Ou’s family has roots in Isan, and he recalled foraging and cooking insects with his grandmother. Ant eggs are relatively easy to find, he said, their nests burrowed into mango trees. The inconspicuous, tiny balls can be hidden in a dish, and when you’re eating them you can convince yourself that they’re not what you think they are. Chewy and flavorless in a flurry of scrambled eggs, they were hardly the dramatic first experience of eating insects I had expected. The dish as a whole was delicious, which was probably the point, albeit on the spicier side for my British palate.
The curiosity, panic, even comedic reactions come when the ante is upped with larger, more ominous-looking insects. I cannot, for example, be convinced that the coconut worm — large, squishy, golden yellow — is going to give me anything but a rapid trip to the closest bathroom. But Ou told me that, even though it is the most visually off-putting insect, it is the one that prompts the most repeat orders from both foreigners and locals. A friend who had joined me wolfed down the worm in one bite and proclaimed it to be sweet and crispy, not soft and mushy. “It looks weird and scary because the worm is really big,” Ou said. “But once people taste it, they like it.”
Such is their popularity that Ou’s usual order from his insect suppliers is almost 9 pounds of coconut worms and 4.5 pounds each of silkworms and ant eggs. He didn’t expect that level of popularity when he first opened what was supposed to be a bar serving rare beer and equally rare snacks (insect snacks, that is) back in 2023. But Akkee soon morphed into a fine dining restaurant. And now the young chef, who sports a ponytail of braids and a black tunnel earring, is racking up awards, including the Michelin Young Chef Award and a Michelin star for Akkee, indicating that insects aren’t a deterrent but a pull factor.
“Celebrated chefs are able to elevate local cuisine and showcase innovative new recipes, giving bugs an upgrade into the fine dining world rather than leaving them out in night market food carts.”
What’s In Your Soy Sauce?
Back in Isan, Num told me he believes one way to convince more people to consume insects is to make them invisible, in new byproducts that don’t scare people off. After all, many other food products have spread far and wide in spite of their unusual methods of production. Fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce, for example, both often entail dead fish left to ferment in barrels for several months, and gummy candies enjoyed the world over are made from boiled animal collagen found in the skin, bones and tissues of pigs and cows.
Putting this idea into practice and determined to mainstream insect products, Num has experimented with making ice cream out of silkworms and soy sauce from crickets. Bringing three large glass vats of deep brown and pungent liquid from his lab, Num poured a little of each into tiny bowls. They looked exactly like any other soy or fish sauce product. The ants had been sifted out a few weeks before, leaving behind a flavorful liquid ideal for accompanying a bowl of rice or noodles.
Dozens of other jars sit and stew in the lab hidden in the back of Samuay & Sons. They started out as crickets, ants or grasshoppers that were mixed with rice mold and stored at room temperature for up to two years. With no visible trace of any kind of insect, they smell and taste familiar and are high in protein; it’s easy to understand why other chefs are putting in orders. “If we can transform them to something that their brains can refer to, something that they’re familiar with — it’s easier for people to try,” Num told me.
According to surveys, roughly 25% of Westerners are open to eating insect-based products; research shows that incorporating insects into familiar products increases the likelihood of consumption. With so many species to offer, Thailand could become a significant insect export hub. But doing that at scale, rather than through local foraging, is a different matter entirely.
“Thailand could become a significant insect export hub, but doing that at scale, rather than through local foraging, is a different matter entirely.”
Insect farms, often for crickets, are popping up across the country. Chutikan Farm in Sukhothai began farming crickets in 2016 and has since developed its own cricket protein powder and cricket chilli powder, and Ban Saento Cricket Farm in Khon Kaen has been working with the F.A.O., Hanboonsong and Khon Kaen University to advise on mass cricket farming, even producing a practical manual for doing so. It takes a cricket three months to mature, Num told me. Compared to pigs or cattle — which take up much more space, produce much more waste and are much more expensive — they have a very short life cycle. “So when you farm it,” he said, “you can farm it a lot.”
But Hanboonsong cautioned against industrially farming some bugs. Grasshoppers, for example, can seriously damage crops, she warned.
Then there are the species that are trickier to farm. Bamboo worms, which apparently have a pleasant, nutty, almost cheesy taste, are hard to find. They require a knowledgeable forager to source them. Skinnier than coconut worms, they have a creamy, white appearance. To find them, foragers must go to a bamboo forest, bore a hole in a bamboo stalk and carefully scrape the worms off. This makes them slightly more expensive than crickets, as are subterranean ants, which live underground and only emerge briefly during the rainy season.
Caterpillars also require a bit more expertise to find. Found in palm and fig trees, but only in the early summer months, they have to be stored in a pile of leaves to keep them alive until they cocoon. Only then can they be toasted to capture their distinct bitter taste, almost reminiscent of matcha. “We love to make a curry out of that,” Num told me.
As for most of the rest of the world, despite the high-end restaurants and quirky insect-derived products, there is likely still a ways to go before six-legged critters become common on dinner plates and restaurant menus. Chargrilled grasshoppers and boiled beetles, no matter how much they benefit a planet in peril, are not often on a person’s mind when they go looking for lunch.
