A Downtown Montreal Food Court Will Serve Bugs Cooked By A Celeb Chef & Tastings Are Free

If you're a meat eater, used to consuming quadrupedal creatures, why not upgrade your leg count to six or eight? Montreal's Espace pour la vie — the org that manages the Montreal Botanical Garden and its Insectarium — is bringing a whole new eating experience downtown. Between November 2 and 5, you can stop by the Entomo-miam kiosk at Le Central to sample insect appetizers prepared by Quebec celebrity chef Daniel Vézina.

Mealworm tapenade, grasshopper trail mix, ant syrup candies, and shortbread flavoured with crickets, pecans and Linden honey will feature on the menu, along with other artisanal products like Gaspesian seaweed and Louis d'Or cheese from Saint-Élizabeth de Warwick.

"This project with the Insectarium not only introduced me to a culinary playground brimming with new flavours, it helped me develop a greater respect for insects," said Chef Vézina.

As part of the Insectarium's one-year anniversary celebrations, the pop-up kiosk will host free tastings and share recipes that promote entomophilic gastronomy (foods pollinated by insects).

Around two billion people worldwide regularly eat edible insects, which offer a sustainable source of nutrition. According to the Insectarium, one kilogram of edible insects only needs two kilograms of feed and 13 litres of water, compared to four times as much feed and 13,500 litres of water needed to produce a single kilogram increase in body weight for cattle. Mealworms also generate about 1% of the greenhouse gases produced by raising beef cattle.

Whether hungry Montrealers will swarm the kiosk remains to be seen.

This article's left-hand cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.