Ohio Restaurant Debuts Spicy Thai Cicada Pizza: What You Need To Know (If Not Eat)

They say that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade. But when life hands you cicadas, should you be making pizza with those noisy bugs?

An Extra Crunch: The Pizza Bandit, an eatery in Dayton, Ohio, has announced the creation of its Spicy Thai Cicada Pie.

“That's an 18" hand-tossed dough with miso hoisin sriracha sauce, mozzarella and provolone, blanched and sautéed locally foraged cicadas, mushroom, cabbage, green onion, mango, cilantro, with a spicy Thai sauce after the bake and a Cicada wing adorned crust!” said the pizzeria on its Facebook page.

“We definitely missed out on soft shell season as these crunchy cicadas add a heck of a note to an otherwise wonderful Thai-inspired pie,” the Facebook posting added. “Opinions of the pizza range from absolutely delicious to...well...uh...yeah... Pair this pie with a BIG summery IPA or Lager!”

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Better Than Pineapple Toppings? Although The Pizza Bandit hosted a live stream tasting panel for the pizza, it admitted the Spicy Thai Cicada Pie will not be available for sale.

“You can NOT get this pizza by the slice or whole pie because we're not even sure if we legally can sell you locally foraged Cicadas,” it stated.

Perhaps it is a shame that The Pizza Bandit didn’t check on whether Ohio law enables cicadas as a pizza ingredient because the insect is edible.

“When you think about an insect that’s coming out of the ground compared to a lot of other shrimps and seafood you might eat, cicadas are actually a lot healthier and cleaner of a food because they’re sipping on the sap of those trees,” said Dr. Cortni Borgerson, professor of anthropology at New Jersey’s Montclair State University, in an interview with WCBS-TV.

“Whereas a lot of the foods that look like them, like shrimp and a lot of animals we might be eating, are actually eating on waste.”

Borgerson added that cicadas have “a really nutty, meaty taste” and can bring zinc, protein and calcium to the diet. She recommended cooking the cicadas in a pan with water and salt.

“It just tastes like sushi,” she added.

(Photo courtesy of The Pizza Bandit.)