Have You Ever Eaten a Tarantula?



I have, I have!

I’ve eaten some weird shit on my travels, and I’ve never been scared of trying anything until I came upon the tarantula.

Let’s face it: tarantulas are creepy and frightening. I’ve eaten snails, duck embryos, squid eyeballs, pig intestines, crickets, dog meat (sorry). But none of them made me as nervous as the tarantula I nibbled on in Cambodia last week.

This was at a roadstop somewhere between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh.




I know, ewwww! But honestly, it wasn’t bad. It was fried and coated with a serious amount of oil and garlic. A winning combination, if you ask me.

The legs were easy. They were crispy, garlicky, yummy fried goodness. But not all that exotic-tasting. Almost like those crispy onion straws you can add to your burgers at Red Robin.

The body was the scary part. Biting into it was like biting into the yellow part of a hard-boiled egg. Except it was black, pungent and tasted nothing like hard-boiled egg. After I got over the idea of sinking my teeth into the bulbous of a tarantula, I realized in fact, that it almost tasted like the body of a soft-shell crab. And if you’ve ever had soft-shell crab with me, you know how much I love it.

So essentially the only thing scary about eating the tarantula was the sheer fact that it was a tarantula. It actually tasted pretty good!

Incidentally, this eight-legged culinary adventure came on the heels of a recent, terrifying night I spent with a wild tarantula in Hoi An, Vietnam. I was sleeping alone inside an office building, on a mattress on the floor, under a mosquito net (how I ended up there is a long, uninteresting story) – whilst a huge, hairy tarantula roamed around the room. I was scared out of my mind! But I survived the night with this ugly, hideous creature. Who’da thunk I would later go on to eat one?!

You’re thoroughly grossed out, I’m sure. But don’t knock it til you try it. Mmmm spiders. Nom nom.

2 Comments

  1. Oh my! I ate a HUGE cricket in Bangkok not too long ago and I felt quite proud of myself but NO WAY EVER could I eat a tarantula! You take the cake! But I agree, the fear of eating it is the worse part, the cricket was pretty tasty. I wouldn’t want to eat them as a snack like french fries or anything, but it wasn’t horrible.

  2. Am glad you liked it. :) Cheers!

Leave a Comment