Is Italy ready for cricket-powder pizza?

At the seafront pizzeria La Rambla in Maccarese, Italy, a short drive from Rome, chef Carlo Del Buono stood at the kitchen counter, throwing a few fistfuls of cricket powder into a bowl of pizza dough made with wheat flour.

"It adds elasticity," he said, as he mixed the dough. "Makes it easier to work with."

Del Buono is one of a number of chefs throughout Italy keen to introduce insect products — high in protein and sustainably farmed — into their restaurant menu.

"Crickets fall completely within the range of Italian tastes," he said, biting into a slice of his cricket powder pizza fresh from the oven. "It's a nutty taste, with a hint of anchovies. Perfect for a vegetable-covered pizza."

While chefs like Del Buono look forward to putting the cricket pizza on their menu — he'll market it, he says, as "a protein pizza" — not all Italians are as enthusiastic, at least for now.

The European Union authorized the adoption of powdered domestic crickets for human consumption in early 2023, but Italy's right-wing government dragged its heels in approving its sale, doing so only in late December. 

Agricultural Minister Francesco Lollobrigida and others argued insect flour would contaminate Italian culinary traditions, with fake news circulating that bakeries would be mandated to bake with cricket flour. 

The right-wing League party tried to pass a measure that would ban cricket flour from school cafeterias. And protesting farmers on tractors last month including insect products on their list of complaints against the EU.

Jose Cianni and Fabrizio Lunazzi say they are unfazed by the resistance.

"I think of it like sushi a decade or so ago," said Lunazzi.

Cianni and Lunazzi, co-founders of Nutrinsect, a cricket-farming startup in the Italian region of Marche, have ambitious plans to introduce insects into the culinary offerings of a country known for its adherence to tradition.

They, along with other investors, are the first in Italy to venture into cricket production for human consumption, launching their startup 2020, spending the last four years fine-tuning production.

Their cricket farm, a low warehouse off a rural road, houses small hot and humid rooms smelling slightly briny and that are lined with plastic bins teeming with crickets. Ringing out all around is the thick trill of 45-day-old males at their sexual peak.

"This is their mating cry," said Cianni.