Last Chance for a Cambodian Delicacy: Crickets

There was one thing I knew I had to try before leaving Cambodia: roasted crickets. Notice that I didn’t say I wanted to, but that I had to. It my last full day in Cambodia and I was on a bus headed to Phnom Penh, when we pulled into a rest stop and I spotted a vendor with a huge pile of the ugly things. It was now or never.

I just couldn’t leave the country without being able to say I’d tried them, so I plunked down 3,000 riel and the cricket lady dug me out a heaping cup full and dumped them in a plastic bag. Right next to the crickets was a towering, oily pile of black spiders — but they looked truly disgusting. The crickets were only mostly disgusting.

I waited until I got back in the bus and had a bottle of iced tea opened and ready before I tried one. The Khmer man in the seat across from me had a bag and was chewing through them like they were candy. He’d tear the legs off, scarf the body and head down, then wipe his hands on the bus window’s curtain. He finished the entire bag in less than ten minutes. I was still staring sceptically at my bag.

The crickets were pretty large –over an inch in length– and were lightly covered in some kind of oil. Before I could talk myself out of it, I popped one in my mouth and began to chew. Thankfully, the experience was rather anti-climatic. I was dreading some kind of bursting gooey center, but they were dry and dessicated all the way through. There wasn’t much flavor at first, but the more I chewed the more it tasted like, well… dirt, really.

I expected them to be sprinkled lightly with salt or pepper or some exotic insect-related spice, but I guess these were for puristsEvery movement of my jaw reminded me “Yup, I’m eating an insect”.