Urban Laotians pay handsomely for ant-egg soup

“YOU WOULDN’T serve this to the king,” says Dalaphone Pholsena, a restaurateur in Vientiane. Before her are two small bowls of ant-egg soup, a favourite dish of the late summer in Laos. In it are chunks of white fish, meaty mushrooms and dozens of splayed and lifeless ants. Bobbing at the surface is the pièce de résistance: clusters of ivory-white eggs that look like tiny white beans. They burst in the mouth like fish roe, but with a more acidic tang.

Ms Dalaphone considers herself a defender of the dishes traditionally eaten by Laos’s subsistence farmers—of which there are still many. Ant-egg soup is a classic: both an important source of protein and an emblem of rural life. The eggs are laid by red weaver ants, which nest in mango trees and coconut palms in April and May. A brave forager—the ants’ bites are like the prick of a needle—uses a stick to tear open the nest, catching the eggs (and lots of livid ants) in a bucket. Wearing as few clothes as possible, the better to brush marauding ants from the skin, and hopping from foot to foot to evade the incensed insects, the harvester then shakes the eggs from the leaves. Rural folk tend to mix this hard-won prize into omelettes, salads or soups, adding a distinctive, sour pop.

Nowadays, however, many pack up the eggs and ship them to markets in...