Bugalicious - Our Experience At this Demonstration of Unique World Cuisine

At first glance you might think that holding a cooking demonstration and competition at the Butterfly Conservatory would be an odd thing to do.



But in fact, for this particular cook off, there probably is no better place in all of Niagara to hold such an event, an event where insects are part of the meal!

We wanted to make sure that our most recent visit to the Butterfly Conservatory would coincide with the 5th annual Bugalicious event that takes place in Niagara Falls every February.

The focus of this “food festival” of sorts is to help bring attention to the food we eat and that what we here in North America consider to be pests are actually a delicacy in other parts of the world.

Around here where else would you find crickets, grasshoppers, beetles and spiders as part of the menu?

The three day event consisted of several chefs competing in an “Iron Chef” style of contests each day where people who tried the various dishes could vote on the one they thought was best.

We went on the opening day and the main dish up for competition included scorpion as one of the ingredients.

One dish was a bruschetta bread topped with tomato and scorpion and the other chef cooked up some kind of stew or soup with scorpion as well.

The two of us weren’t really in the mood for scorpion that day so I stuck with the traditional cricket granola bar and hornet juice(a tropical fruit juice with powered hornet mixed in)

Tara stayed behind the camera while I sampled the food and drink. Really, it tastes just the same as a normal fruit drink and granola bar but just knowing its full of insects kind of makes you a little uneasy.

We noticed however that many others who attended were really into it, braver than us, they would grab the scorpion topped food and eat it as though it was a slice of pizza or some chicken noodle soup!

The chefs there were really good at explaining how they made the food and answered all questions about dishes and themselves.

The event seemed pretty popular. For the hour or so we were in the Bugalicious area there was a steady stream of people going through sampling the food and speaking with the staff.

Having such an event at the butterfly conservatory is a great idea because everyone going in already has insects on the mind, they just didn’t think they might be eating one!

No butterflies were eaten in the making of this show!

Enough about Bugalicious, Check out more experiences!

New! A convenient way to have your say