Last week, our digital editor Brianna Schubert and I were both stopped by a particular post on Instagram: a new experimental coffee drink on the menu at Discourse café. If you’ve never been, Discourse makes drinks with more conventional ingredients and also with things you wouldn’t naturally associate with coffee. Dystopian Nostalgia is the name of one of those offbeat offerings. It’s a coffee with flamed rosemary served with a very literal interpretation of the nostalgic snack, Ants on a Log. As in, REAL ANTS. Part of the caption read, “This one is a wild one, even for us, and we are so absolutely here for it!” In the photo, it looks like a thick, black carpet of insects.
Now, I don’t have anything against insects. I just have had extremely limited experience with their usage. I’ve had grasshopper pulverized to fine dust and used as a topping for a fish dish. I knew it was there, but only because I was told. In the bigger picture, insects are and have long been part of the diet of other cultures on this earth. Science tells us there are great nutritional benefits to eating these organisms. Science also tells us that, in the future, we will likely need to turn to them more widely as a food source.
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So it’s mid-afternoon and I’m at the Discourse location at Radio Milwaukee. When I order Dystopian Nostalgia ($9), the barista looks so jazzed. “Oh, you’re going to love it. It’s so good,” they say. After a few minutes, my order is called out and I carry it gingerly to my table. It’s a work of art – a small oval tray with a little handle-less mug of hot, creamy goat milk latte next to an upside-down shot glass. Perched on top of the glass, as if on a pedestal, is the Ants on a Log: a short celery stick topped with a thick smudge of golden beet miso caramel and sprinkled with what are clearly identifiable, fully intact black ants. I ask if the ants were sourced from anywhere specific. “Maine,” the barista says, holding up the jar of ants. I’m sure they’re artisanal ants.
OK, enough. What about this thing I’m about to eat? The first part that (sorry) bugs me is there is no subtlety, no camouflage. The barista tells me to take a sip of the coffee, then a bite of the log. I’m determined to eat it in just two bites. It needs to happen quickly. I sip the latte – it’s very creamy, with a smoky hum that slows my pulse. Now, the first bite of the log. What is revealed is texture – the caramel, smooth and thick; the juicy, crisp celery, and finally a sandy, shredded wheat-like crunch that rubs against the roof of my mouth. The flavor of saline is almost imperceptible against the very sweet caramel. The other half of the log is staring me in the face. A few sips of latte and I pop the rest of it into my mouth.
This is all just a mind game, I tell myself. When I was a kid, I remember being both fascinated and also definitely disturbed by the colonies of ants engineering their mounds and hills with such order and precision. And maybe some of that experience, my unease with this particular species of bug, crept into this experience. Give me just the right insect and that’ll be my new protein source? Crickets. Mealworms. Ugh, well, no! But do I regret this Ant on a Log? No, though I won’t be rushing to repeat it, either. And I’m not sure I’ll ever look at a celery stick the same way again.
