The Hawks will start selling cricket tacos, if that’s your thing

That delightful crunch you enjoy when eating hard shell tacos normally comes from its corn tortilla exterior. But if you’re at Friday’s Hawks vs. Nuggets game in Atlanta, the crunchy texture you bite into will come from somewhere else.

Crickets.

No, that’s not the sound of you waiting for me to finish my sentence. That’s what you’ll be eating if you stop at a concession stand hosted by Aketta, an Austin, Texas-based company that labels itself an “Edible Insect Movement for a Sustainable World.”

Just look at its homepage:

You can get three tacos for $12, according to Sports Illustrated, and aside from the creepy critters, the flour tortilla wraps around avocado, onion, cilantro and queso fresco. Here’s what the cricket tacos look like:

That ain’t pulled pork, fam. It’s not braised chicken, grilled steak or seared shrimp either. It’s a critter.

Philips Arena will also have a choice between Texas BBQ and Sweet and Spicy Cajun-flavored crickets available in one-ounce bags for $4.50. Aketta hopes this is just the beginning of its reach into the NBA:

“We’re thrilled to have our products featured in Philips Arena,” said Aketta’s head of marketing and business development, Vincent Vitale, via SI.com. “We hope to get our crickets into other sports venues around the country.”

I’ve said “don’t knock it ‘til you try it” under varying circumstances for just about anything, but I’ve got to draw the line in the sand at crickets, especially in my tacos.

I’ve been to Austin before. I’ve been to Los Angeles, and I’ve been to Miami. I’ve had some of the best tacos of my life in those three cities, and crickets were nowhere near the menu.

That doesn’t mean, dear reader, that you might not enjoy said cricket tacos. As a matter of fact, certain insects are a delicacy in Mexico, as well as Brazil, Ghana, Thailand, and even some places here in the United States.

As for me? I’m from Brooklyn. And the only crickets we deal with annoy you late at night while you’re trying to get some sleep.

That’s just me though. Here’s what other people think about Aketta crickets: