Market Snack · Deep-Fried Insects

Fried Crickets & Grasshoppers

Photo: Chaoborus / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Vendors deep-fry them whole, legs and wings included, and pile them into paper cones by the scoop the same way a Western street stall would sell popcorn.

Crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms, and other insects are deep-fried until crisp, salted, and sometimes tossed with chili or lime leaf, then piled into mounds at market carts. They're sold by the scoop as an everyday protein-rich snack rather than a novelty.

Why it's made this way: Insects have long been a wild-harvested food source across Laos, and stalls selling them openly in Vientiane's markets reflect how ordinary they are here, compared to how foreign visitors often perceive them.