Perfect with a cold cerveza
Insect vendor Benjamin Rodriguez says his wares are "much better than the junk food they sell in supermarkets."
The San Juan market is Mexico City’s most famous deli of exotic meats, where an adventurous shopper can hunt down hard-to-find critters like ostrich, wild boar and crocodile.
But the priciest items in the market aren’t the armadillo steaks or even the bluefin tuna.
That would be the frozen chicatanas — giant winged ants — at around $225 a pound. Apparently, they’re delicious in salsa.
“Much better than the junk food they sell in supermarkets,” says vendor Benjamin Rodriguez, showing off his ant stash beside trays of crispy fried crickets and live snails. “All natural,” he adds with a wry grin. Rodriguez and the other bug mongers of San Juan offer their wares as “pre-Hispanic” foods, a nod to the Aztecs, Mixtecs and other civilizations that flourished for millennia here on diets rich in grubs, grasshoppers and other edible invertebrates.
Insect-eating was long regarded with shame and disgust by elite Mexicans who viewed the practice as a vestige of rural backwardness. But bugs have crawled on to the menus of some of the country’s most celebrated eateries in recent years, as top chefs seek esoteric regional ingredients for cuisine known as alta mexicana (high-end Mexican).
“These are foods that were eaten in pre-Hispanic times because there wasn’t meat, but now they’re seen as luxurious,” says Lesley Tellez, a food writer who leads tours of Mexico’s markets and kitchens.
Mexico has some 300 to 550 species of edible insects, more than any country in the world, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which issued a 200-page report this year in praise of entomophagy — insect-eating — as a promising source of sustainable protein.
The tiny comestibles are very high in protein, the FAO report notes, especially compared with meats like beef and pork. In the poor, rural communities of Mexico’s central highlands and southern states, families have been eating insects for generations as tradition, but also out of necessity.
“We ate them because we were hungry,” says Mario Rendon, a bug supplier at the San Juan market, who grew up in the southern state of Guerrero.
When the rains came in late spring, he and his brothers would accompany their father on cricket-capturing expeditions, trapping them in nets. They also learned to pull meaty grubs — gusanos de maguey — from flowering agave plants.
“Fry them up with a little salt and lime,” Rendon says. “Delicious.”
Most of Mexico’s edible insects are caught wild, not farmed, then sold at regional markets or trucked into the cities. Among the most treasured delicacies are escamoles (ant larvae), cumiles (stink bugs) and ahuatle (water bug eggs), dubbed “Mexican caviar.”
The stink bugs are typically eaten live and are prized for their powerful anise-like flavour and cinnamon finish.
“Eating them in a taco can be a little weird,” says Mexico City restaurant manager Eduardo Lucero. “They sorta escape into your mouth when you bite down.”