What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?
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Over the weekend, I took my visiting father and my two kids to Typhoon, the restaurant at the Santa Monica airport that serves, among other things, insects. This was not to gross out the kids but to illustrate a point of family history. When I was little, my dad went through a phase when he’d bring home tins of exotic stuff like escargots, frogs’ legs and chocolate-covered ants — not to make us eat them but for the entertainment value.
So I ordered a plate of scorpions on toast, another of crickets with stir-fried garlic and julienned potatoes (below, right). Just for fun. The girls got noodles and pad Thai and ‘normal food.’ But I underestimated the dare factor. Seven-year-old Sophie (left, with scorpion) ate ...
two crickets, just because she wanted to shock her sister. Isabel, 10, really got into it, eating 21 crickets and one scorpion and keeping a running tally on her napkin. ‘Crickets I like, scorpions not so much,’ she commented. ‘They’re crispy, kind of nutty.’ She can’t wait until school starts, so she can impress the boys in her class. ‘Grandpa ate the least crickets,’ Isabel pointed out. ‘And he used to eat ants!’
Ants, crickets, scorpions. Probably the oddest dish I’ve eaten was not insects but grilled whole piranha, served with rice and a blistering vinegar-pepper sauce, at a riverboat encampment on the Amazon. Alligator, yes; live octopus, not yet. Other nominees for weirdest food, comment below.
Typhoon, 3221 Donald Douglas Loop South, Santa Monica. (310) 390-6565.
— Amy Scattergood
