Our national museum has an interesting new dish on the menu - a burger made of insects.
The Bug Slider is made with locusts, and is served with kūmara chips and lime ant aioli.
The burger patty is comprised of fried locusts and minced chicken and is served up on a slider bun. It's available for a limited time only, in order to coincide with the museum's Bug Lab exhibition, which runs until April 17.
Te Papa spokeswoman Kate Camp says it's "pretty tasty", with the locusts adding a layer of additional texture.
"It tastes mostly of chicken, only crunchier," she said.
The burger comes with a full locust on top, which poses "a deep psychological question", Ms Camp said: "Do you eat the head first?"
If you can get past the visual element, the aioli is a stand-out. The ants are dotted throughout, as though caught and perished in a pool of mayonnaise.
But it is mayonnaise - therefore, it's great, Ms Camp says.
"People say it gives a slightly citrusy taste to the aioli. To me it just tasted quite scrummy, really."
And if that hasn't sold you on a bug burger, Ms Camp says it's also better for the environment than one containing beef.
"They're less carbon-intensive to create, so to create a bug burger takes a lot less water and creates a lot less greenhouse gas emissions than a beef burger," she says.
An easy source of protein and fat, crickets, grubs, grasshoppers, ants, scorpions and tarantulas are commonly eaten all around the world - and have been for thousands of years.
In New Zealand, the juicy huhu grub is a delicacy in the traditional Māori diet. Huhu grubs are the larvae of the huhu beetle. Eaten raw, they reportedly have the taste and texture of peanut butter. Once roasted, "their crispy outsides have the taste of fried chicken skin, and their soft, creamy insides have the marked taste of almonds," according to Te Papa's online resource Tai Awatea.
So, the burger is tasty, insects could be better for the environment than more traditional Western sources of protein, but would she go back for more?
"I'm trying to eat healthy after the Christmas break, so maybe not," Ms Camp said.
The dish cost $9.50.
Newshub.
