Colombia's Giant Roasted Ants Are Deliciously Unruly
Category: Culinary Chaos 9th May 2026
Listen, New York has its pretensions, but nothing reads like a scandal until you tell someone you once ate a bag of toasted ants handed to you on a bus. In Colombia's Santander region there is a proper culinary oddity called hormigas culonas, literally "big-bottomed ants," the size of a thumbnail and proud of it. The species is Atta laevigata, and locals have been harvesting and roasting them for centuries.
They turn up during the rainy season, when the queens stop hoarding and the workers flood the trails. Women of the towns harvest them from the nests, strip off the wings, and then roast or toast the abdomens until they are dry and crunchy. They get salted, sometimes lightly fried, sometimes packaged like the roadside candy they are - a snack, an ingredient, a thing you give as a gift if you are trying to make a point about vigor.
Yes, there's folklore: handed to prospective suitors, gifted as a sign of fertility, sold as a memento to tourists with a wink. But leave the romance aside for a second and talk about the taste. People who know food will tell you the honest truth: they taste like toasted nuts with a whisper of bacon, smoky and oddly buttery for something that once crawled out of the ground. I will not dignify it with haute adjectives; it is crunchy, savory, and shamelessly satisfying.
Are there rules? Sure. Harvesting is seasonal and local, and the ants are a real source of protein for rural communities. They are not some Instagram stunt; they are traditional, practical, and yes, a little theatrical. I tried them once years ago after a friend from the interior shoved a paper bag into my hands and said, "Eat, you city girl." I ate, I chewed, and I admitted defeat: they were better than my expectations and worse for my reputation.
So if you want culinary chaos with a conscience, skip the novelty pop-ups and seek out an honest market in Santander. Bring curiosity, bring salt, and bring a story you're prepared to tell at dinner parties until someone else ups the ante.