Nobody likes me, everybody hates me. Guess I’ll just eat… grubs

HANOI, VIETNAM – OK, I’ll admit that title isn’t entirely accurate. Not everyone hates me, and I’m sure there must be a couple people who actually like me… at least a little. And I know my wife likes me (most of the time anyway).

But I did eat a grub the other day. Several of them, in fact.

And that after telling my wife again and again that there was no way I would ever, ever, ever eat a grub. “I’d have to be starving first,” I repeatedly told her. “I would eat grass; I would eat tree bark; I’d even eat dirt before I’d eat a grub. YUCK!”

You’ve seen them on TV, on those shows where the guy travels around the world and eats all kinds of disgusting stuff. He’ll hold up a gigantic wriggling insect, or a handful of squirming maggots, then pop them into his mouth and smirk at the camera.

I always wonder if the camera cuts away as he turns around and pukes his guts out. That creepy stuff can’t possibly all taste good. It certainly looks awful to me.

When we arrived in Vietnam, we spent a lot of time exploring the local markets, where vendors offer all manner of fruits, vegetables, roots, herbs and spices. And more types of meat and seafood than I’d ever seen in one place before.

There are tables piled high with every part of the chicken. Freshly butchered pigs reduced to piles of still-warm loins, snouts and feet, next to huge bowls overflowing with trimmed fat. We saw mounds of organ meats – hearts, livers, kidneys and more, intestines ready to be stuffed and made into sausage.

Mesh nets were filled with gigantic warty frogs, seemingly resigned to their fate as someone’s future dinner. And there’s seafood of every kind – fish, eels, turtles, crabs, prawns and more – lots of it still swimming in tubs of murky water.

Bowls of grubs as big as my finger

And then there are the bowls filled with squirming grubs. Huge ones, as big as my little finger (one joint of it anyway).

Eewww!

Who would want to eat that?

So you may well ask how I ended up eating grubs?

I certainly didn’t set out that morning saying, “I think I’ll eat a grub today.”

No, it was just another one of our typical atypical days. We never really know just what our day will hold; it’s always a new adventure with us.

We were going to meet a friend for lunch at her place of business in Hanoi’s Old Town. The last time we were there she had picked up a bunch of delicious food from a lunch buffet located nearby. This time we wanted her to take us there so we could see for ourselves what all they had to offer.

“Can you show us what to look for so we can maybe find a similar place near our home?” we asked.

“Of course,” she replied, and led us across the street and into one of the dark doorways we often peer into but would never deem to trespass inside.

I ducked under the low ceiling as we headed down a corridor into the bowels of one of the ancient buildings of Old Town. After a short walk, the corridor opened into a well-lit wider space. Through a wide, open window I could see a number of people seated at tables, and before me was a counter filled with bowls of different Vietnamese dishes.

There was steamed rice, of course, the staple ingredient of any Vietnamese meal. And there were also a couple types of fried or baked fish, several different steamed or stir-fried vegetables, stewed chicken, marinated sausage and rice patties wrapped in an edible leaf, several dishes we couldn’t identify, and finally, right in front of me, a large bowl of brown roasted grubs. Ick!

We proceeded to make our selections, and almost as an afterthought I decided, “What the heck. Give me two of those grubs,” I said, holding up two fingers and pointing to two individual grubs on the rim of the bowl. The man behind the table spooned SIX of the critters onto my plate.

Gulp!

I was going to eat a grub

Now I was committed. I was really going to eat a grub.

I’m the kind of guy who eats everything on my plate. Melanie always jokes that I’m a charter member of the “clean plate club.” If I put something onto my plate, by golly I’m going to eat every bite… almost always.

So as I was eating tasty bites of chicken, scooping up bits of rice and sampling the various vegetables I had selected, I kept looking at that little clump of grubs off to one side of my plate.

“What is that going to taste like?” I wondered. Will I gag as I bite into it? Will I instantly retch and barf up all the stuff I already swallowed? Will I be instantly poisoned?

I seriously doubted the last of those scenarios; if grubs were poisonous, they wouldn’t be serving them at the buffet. It’s bad for business to kill off all your customers.

No, I figured they must at least be edible. Not necessarily delicious, but edible.

My moment of truth finally came. I couldn’t put it off any longer. My plate was now empty save for the grubs and a small mound of rice I had saved in case I needed something to neutralize the taste if it was really bad.

I picked up one of the tiny beasts with my chopsticks and studied it closely. It still looked like a grub, just not quite as big as the ones I had seen at the market. Apparently, they shrink a bit during the cooking process.

The small morsel was a nice glossy, dark brown, obviously coated in some sort of sauce. From my experience, sauce can cover a myriad of ill flavors, and make even mediocre foods taste good.

I insisted that Melanie take several photos to document my endeavor. If I was going to eat a grub, I wanted photographic proof.

Lifting the critter to my mouth, I closed my eyes and bit down. It was barely crunchy, yielding easily to my bite. And as I suspected, the sauce was quite savory, very salty and slightly peppery. It actually tasted… pretty good. I chewed and swallowed.

I did it!

I had eaten a grub and survived!

My next move was to offer one to Melanie. After all, she has told me time and again that grubs would be a good source of protein, and that I should knock off my comments about how disgusting they are.

Now she would have to eat her words. And to her credit, she did. She ate one of my remaining grubs but balked at the offering of a second. “No, that was enough. I already ate my whole plate of food. I’m full,” she said.

“Clean-plate kid” that I am, I finished off the rest and washed it all down with a sip of beer.

So now that I’ve broken the impasse on my “grubs as food” issue, I’ve rearranged my end-of-the-world survival menu somewhat. If I were starving, I would definitely eat grubs BEFORE resorting to eating bark or dirt.

But I still might eat the grass first, perhaps with a sweet vinaigrette.

What’s your first choice?