Below is a shot from a recent visit to Oyamel, a tasty small bites style restaurant in D.C. where you can order up some really amazing food.
Like these grasshopper tacos. Spicy, crunchy, and just a great bit of food I classify this outing alongside last year's lengua guisada tasting - a food adventure. Why? Because we just don't always get to go around trying out not just grasshopper and beef tongue, but beautifully prepared grasshopper and beef tongue!
I am not a "thrill seeker", the excitement of eating these foods doesn't arise out of their being strange or foreign to the average American - the excitement follows when it tastes delicious. Which is just another reason you shouldn't be afraid to try this stuff. If things like bugs or unfamiliar cuts of meat are devoured the world over in a variety of preparations, odds are it's not out of desperation, it's because it tastes good.
When people say something "tastes like chicken", I've come to realize that they aren't referring to the flavor. Sometimes chicken doesn't even taste like chicken [should]. They're speaking to the comfort level of a particular food, to the texture (typically a greater barrier than flavor), to its overall familiarity. For a country of immigrants, there's a lot of food we haven't tried.
So you don't have to try something out of the norm for a culinary rush, try it because if there's a long line of people ahead of you to get at it, there's probably a good reason for that.
