When it comes to food, I can say that I’m both adventurous and finicky. Adventurous because I dare to try anything that I think is interesting, and finicky because I can be very particular about the things that I put into my mouth.
Today, I achieved another milestone in my life venturing for exotic food. Scorpions and grasshoppers. Yep, the cool looking crustacean with hard carapace, and the green colored insect. May sound icky to most people, but in some Asian countries, both scorpions and grasshoppers are considered delicacies.
Anyway, back to the topic. Had my lunch at a local Thai restaurant today that serves both of these odd food. I first tried the grasshopper. Deep fried style… kinda dark brown in color. Initially, felt really reluctant to put that damn thing into my mouth, because I really do not like the way its abdomen looked. But when my buddies all ate one each, I felt compelled to try at least one as well – lest those guys would fucking laugh at my ass for being such a sissy.
So, I was like, holding the insect and looking at it, having shitloads of second thoughts. Then, when the pressure mounted to the boiling point, I forced myself to eat the grasshopper’s leg first. Tasted like nothing – albeit a bit crunchy. Then I ate the other leg… until it finally became a limbless grasshopper. And then I summoned every ounce of my courage and popped the whole thing into my mouth… chewing and trying to visualize myself eating a prawn. Surprisingly, the damn grasshopper tasted quite good. Just like a mantis prawn. Then I took another. And another. And eventually, was enjoying a few mouthfuls of them!
Alright, this kinda give me some guts to try out the next challenge. Deepfried SCORPION (I don’t know why the Thais like to deep fry their food)! The size of the scorpion was approximately the size of a nokia 8250 mobile phone, quite big. If the bugger wasn’t dead, the size of this thing would have sent me bolting out of the restaurant running for my life. Seriously.
Because it was such a dangerous creature, I decided to eat it’s stinger first – to disarm the bastard. In case it suddenly got resurrected and becomes a zombie scorpion… at least it won’t be able to use its stinger. The stinger tasted nothing special other than being crunchy. I then bit the scorpion into half (because it was too big, choking hazard)… and attempt to capture its taste by chewing. It tasted like some rubber glove… crossed with the taste of a type of shampoo that I accidentally ingested when I was a kid. Didn’t like the taste at all. But the pair of pinchers tasted quite ok though.
So, what do I think of them? Well, the grasshopper was a surprise, but kinda disappointed with the scorpion. The grasshopper looked kinda bad outside, but tasted good inside. The scorpion was the complete opposite. I was expecting it to taste like a lobster or something, but it tasted really awful. Maybe that scorpion I ate was diseased or something. Too bad I only had one to eat, no chance to confirm that.
Here’s the update list of exotic creatures that I’ve eaten before :
dog, flying fox, squirrel, python, wild cat, turtle, lamb, goat, iguana, ostrich, pigeon, wild boar, pangolin, canary, frog, clear water eel, arowana, fox, crawfish, rabbit, black panther, scorpion, grasshopper