Food & Beverage

When your pie looks back at you -- the cicada pizza experiment

"I've got my eye on you!" Member of Brood X cicadas-turned-pizza topping. (iStock)

June 15, 2021

Ah, cicadas — those beady-eyed and beastly little faulty flyers we love to hate! Who knew their very presence at a restaurant taste-testing would prompt coverage by the likes of both CNN and the oh-so-haute Food & Wine magazine?

But that is indeed the case for Dayton-Ohio based The Pizza Bandit, which hosted a Facebook live tasting panel Saturday featuring the crunchy little critters.

On a typical day, The Pizza Bandit sells New York-style pies, but these haven't been typical days in the brand's hometown of Miami River Valley, where the little winged visitors take over about every 17 years to mate and die before their offspring crawl back in the ground for another 17 years.

A few, however, didn't make it to mating day this year, and instead, were diverted to serve as pizza toppings on an 18-inch pie sampled by The Pizza Bandit's culinary team as well as several others. The end result included locally foraged cicadas that were "blanched and sauteed," according to the Facebook posting, then put on the pie with miso hoisin sriracha sauce, mozzarella, provolone, mushrooms, cabbage, green onion, mango, cilantro, Thai sauce and a crust all aflutter with cicada wings.

A photo of The Pizza Bandit's wing-adorned cicada pie posted on its Facebook account.

A video revealed that the the creator of pie, along with the guy who netted the bugs, a food scientist, beer-pairing aficionado were neither bowled over or repulsed by the experience. A couple of others seemed to actually enjoy it. (It should be noted that this pie is not for sale.)

Still, as one taster put it, there's a significant barrier to entry on this one: "If you can get around the goo and the crunch, it's really good."

Taking his word for it.