Sell All Your Pretzel Company Stock

Because beer and pretzels will be much less fashionable when this emerging trend hits the US. Beer and crunchy, deep-fried crickets!

Breeders of crickets say the insects have become "finger food for beer drinkers" in an age of increasing prosperity in Vietnam compared with the recent past when they might have been food for the hungry or for wartime soldiers surviving in the jungle.

Businessman Le Thanh Tung raises hundreds of thousands of the flying insects in barrels and sells them to restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City, the Southeast Asian country's largest urban area, or to other breeders in neighboring provinces.

"The taste is very particular, very special and it smells good and tastes delicious but it is very difficult to compare cricket to other meat," said Tung, 28, suggesting that crickets are an acquired taste.

At his small farm and restaurant about 25 km (16 miles) west of the city center, a plastic-covered menu with photographs of cricket dishes offers "young crickets deep fried," "cricket salad," "breaded cricket," "cricket noodle" and "peppered cricket."

One customer rode 340 km on a motorbike from his home near the border with Cambodia to buy two boxes full of twitching, chirping crickets to breed and serve at his restaurant.

"There is a demand because people like to eat better," said the customer, Nguyen Chinh Anh.

Gee, I wonder if PETA will go after these guys next?

  • By Dan, Monday, 25 September , 2006 @ 9:59 am

    Yeah, really! After that pretzel attacked King George, I was wondering how we could strike back. Thanks Blue Crab!

  • By Nate, Monday, 25 September , 2006 @ 10:12 am

    Dan,

    Wouldn’t a more appropriate response be a pre-emptive attack on Lay’s Potatoe Chips?

  • By Dan, Monday, 25 September , 2006 @ 10:37 am

    You’re right. Economic sanctions never work. We must make an example of something.

  • By Black Jack, Monday, 25 September , 2006 @ 3:45 pm

    You get hungry enough, you’ll eat most anything.

    I remember Paul Newman’s great line in “Hombre.” The prissy woman was making fun of reservation Indians for eating dog. Newman asked if she had ever been hungry, really hungry, not just ready for supper, but so hungry her stomach swells up. No, she answered, but even if she was that hungry she wouldn’t eat dog.

    Newman looked down his nose at her, smerked, and opined that if she was hungry enough she’d eat dog all right, and fight for the bones. The finality with which he said it indicated he knew what he was talking about.

Other Links to this Post

  1. Blue Crab Boulevard » Blog Archive » THIS Officially Makes Deep-Fried Cricket Sound Good — Monday, 25 September , 2006 @ 10:52 am

WordPress Themes