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Chocolate Crickets and Fried Pig Ears on the Menu Thursday

A food project offers a taste of the exotic Thursday on Duke's East Campus

On Thursday, Duke students eating dinner at the Marketplace Café will have a few unusual dining options.

Care for a chocolate-covered crickets or fried pig ear? No? How about a termite?

Sounds icky? Not according to people in two-thirds of the world who happily nosh on these sorts of things. So argues Thomas Parker, a visiting faculty fellow from Vassar College, in promotion of an ongoing series of campus events at Duke aimed at getting people to try new food and consider their roles in various human cultures.

“They’re a great source of protein,” Parker says. “But people in our society have decided insects are gross.”

Hosted by Duke University Dining, "Subnature and the Culinary Culture" is from 5-9 p.m. and will include an educational tent in front of the East Union. Other food items will include in-house hot-smoked brisket, lamb sausages and shrimp, Senegalese grilled fish, Yassa Chicken and Mechoui, tender roasted whole lamb and more.

This exotic food spread will be the regular food service Thursday for first-year Duke students who live and eat on East Campus. Other students and members of the public interested in taking part must pay the regular $16.50 dinner cost.

The event will also include an appearance by naturalist Wildman Steve Brill, who will discuss edible and medicinal plants found in the wild. Brill will also offer foraging tours from West to East Campus before and after the event. Local pitmaster Ed Mitchell, owner of the Durham restaurant Que, will also participate.

The exercise casts a spotlight on reclaimed – or "subnatured" food sources – those that were once in vogue but fell out of mainstream use due to shifting cultural norms.

Thursday’s event is one of many throughout September and October under the broader umbrella of Subnature and Culinary Culture, a project aimed at investigating food and its role in various cultures. A full schedule of events is available here.

The project is funded by Humanities Writ Large, a five-year, $6 million enterprise underwritten by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and aimed at boosting the humanities at Duke. A special dinner Oct. 2 will highlight the food project, featuring members of the Nordic Food Lab, a Copenhagen facility that helps create dishes for NOMA, the Danish eatery named “World’s Best Restaurant” by Restaurant Magazine.  The dinner will be at 6 p.m. at the Cotton Room in Durham’s Golden Belt District, and tickets are available for $185.