There has been much ado in the press about one particularly odd food offering at this year’s California State Fair. Frequent visitors to ranSACkedmedia.com know exactly what I’m talking about; The Maggot Melt. It is two pieces of melted cheese on a toasted bun, with just a dash of something that one might expect to find squirming around on a piece of doggy doo-doo. I decided to try one for myself to see if it lived up to the hype.

As always, there are dozens of different food vendors at Cal Expo serving up a wide variety of specialties. However, if you want to test your courage you’ll have to find “Jungle George’s Exotic Meats and Bugs”. The menu boasts way more than just the Maggot Melt. Brave fairgoers can also sink their teeth into alligator, kangaroo, yak, beaver, python, and raccoon dishes, just to name a few. I thought it best to stick to one strange plate for the day, so I plopped down my seven bucks and watched as the grill chef prepped my meal.

Preparing the Maggot Melt hardly seemed like rocket science. Two halves of an enriched flour bun were warmed on an open grill, with two thick pieces of American Cheese to boot. Once the cheese became soft, about a dozen large and quite dead insects were placed into the sandwich in a manner which ensured with every bite there would be a crunchy larva to remind me what I had signed up for.

Besides the texture of the creatures in my meal there is sadly little more to report. The “maggots” looked more like mealworms, the type one could find in a pet store to feed to a lizard. There wasn’t any favor added from the bugs, and the bun and cheese were standard festival fare; unremarkable and cheap. The real benefit of finishing the Maggot Melt has to be the bragging rights. I posted this adventure in real-time on my Facebook account, and my friends were all aghast that anyone would pay good money to eat bugs on purpose. If I could do it again I probably would have invested my money into the raccoon or beaver, but if I did I doubt I’ve would have such a great story to share at parties. 

I will share one bit of advice with any would-be Maggot Melt tasters, get a drink to wash it down. I kept finding bits of insect in my mouth until I found my way to the beer garden. The Racer 5 Ale I enjoyed afterwards complimented the melt quite nicely.