This mezcal is served with a side of scorpion

“The whole scorpion is edible and it’s full of protein,” Rafael de la Cuesta told me as he lined up four shots of mezcal with a scorpion submerged in each glass.

He then sprinkled grains of dry ice into the shot glasses, making the mezcal bubble and give off smoke while the inch-long scorpions danced as if they were still alive.

“You can either eat the scorpion first and then do the shot, or you can swallow it whole as if it were a pill,” he explained helpfully. “I recommend eating it first. That way you get the full experience.”

De la Cuesta, 33, is the heavily tattooed head bartender at Reyes Salón Cantina, a bar in Guadalajara famous for its scorpion shots.

“When we opened the bar, we wanted to do something different, to have a unique selling point that people would know us for,” he told me as the bar began to fill up one Friday evening. “One of our partners mentioned one day that there were a lot of scorpions at his farm, and that was what gave us the idea.”

That’s all well and good, but shouldn’t the cantina’s customers be concerned about ingesting venemous arthropods?

Click here to read this article in full at VICE Munchies.