Three Methods of Eating Cockroach

Dorothy So does pest control by eating her way around it.

A fly in the soup is a classic restaurant faux pas, but what if that bug is supposed to be a part of your meal? Yes, we’re talking insect eating—technically known as entomophagy, though more likely translated to “ew, that’s gross” to most people. But eating bugs is really not as horrid as it sounds. In fact, insects are said to be extremely good for the body, being a rich source of important nutrients, and many countries consider insect eating to be a perfectly normal and common culinary practice.

If you want to sample some buggy delights of your own, your best bet in town is the infamous Delicious Inn. This eatery was originally located in San Po Kong before closing down and relocating to Sham Shui Po earlier last year. Delicious Inn is known for its menu of wacky dishes, from donkey meat stew to duck chin with chilies. But of course, just like us, most customers make the trek for one thing—the insect menu.

“We used to have a lot more varieties of bugs on the menu and we could serve insects according to their seasonality,” says Delicious Inn manager Yu Chak-bun who lists hard-shelled beetles and cicadas as being part of the bug menu at his old San Po Kong restaurant. But the creepy crawlies are much more difficult to find nowadays, forcing Yu to cut down his bug selection at the restaurant to just three varieties. He emerges from the kitchen with a big smile on his face and an equally big plate in his hand, heaped high with thin, elongated golden-brown strips. The thin strips smell like French fries and look a little like French fries... save the small beady eyes at one tip and the little crawlers on the bottom. Welcome to our first course—caterpillars in spicy salt. Yu sources the caterpillars (which he claims improves your eyesight) from Heyuan in Guangdong, China and fries them in hot oil until crisp and golden, which actually covers up most of the discernable bug flavor. It’s a slightly easier dish to down for the bug-eating amateur and actually quite enjoyable when paired with some ice cold beer.

As for the second dish, we are presented with little cylindrical cocoons, which, like the caterpillars, Yu had stir-fried with spicy salt. Cocoons are fleshier than caterpillars though, and have a softer, somewhat spongy texture. As well, the insect’s natural protein flavor is much more prominent. So it’s an absolute must that you finish the plate off while it’s still fresh from the kitchen and piping hot. Otherwise, once the cocoons cool down it might taste as if you’re just gnawing on cold, raw bugs, which we’re guessing could be unnerving to some.

And of course, in true dramatic fashion, Yu saved the hardest-to-stomach for last with a dish of Delicious Inn’s signature black waterbug cockroaches. These whole bugs are salt baked and look absolutely no different from their precooked (i.e. pre-dead) form, complete with beady eyes, feelers and even the little spines on each of their tiny, spindly legs. We’re not going to lie—they’re definitely not the most pleasant things to look at, especially on a dining table. “These are good for healing the bladder,” Yu boasts. Awesome selling point.

We take the first step and grab one of the little buggers and place it onto our own plates. At first, we assumed we could just pop the whole thing into our mouth, crunch our way through it, and call it a day. Turns out, there’s actually a
multi-step technique to consuming the cockroach.

1 We imitate Yu as he grabs one of the slippery-shelled bugs in one hand, holding it between his thumb and first finger.

2 We rip off the hard shell cover on the insect’s back and did the same to the soft wings lying underneath to reveal just the soft body tissue of the roach. So far so good.

3 Next, we twist off the head and, as Yu instructed, pull out the long trail of insect guts with the head, trying hard not to gag at the same time.

And with the roach properly prepped and cleaned, there is only one thing left to do: consume it. We lift the bug to our mouths and suck from where the head used to be. The creamy, paste-like mass of protein doesn’t register at first; the insect protein has a distinct and very strong, mature flavor, which can be overpowering on its own but fortunately, in this dish, is well balanced by the ever-so-slight savoriness of the salt baked shell. And sure enough, just as Yu promised, as our tastebuds became used to the flavor and texture, we found ourselves reaching for our second waterbug, closely followed by a third and fourth helping. By the end of the meal, we had cleaned off the whole plate of roaches.

If you can get past that initial fearful thought of popping a creepy crawly into your mouth, you might be rewarded with the same surprisingly pleasant
culinary discovery we made at Delicious Inn. After all, at the end of the day, half the fun of eating comes from trying all different sorts of foods with an open mind and, more importantly, a ready stomach.

Delicious Inn, 29-33 Shun Ning Rd., Sham Shui Po, 2748-0002.