Worked for a Japanese company and visited the head office in Tokyo. One of the more senior managers took us to his favorite local sea food restaurant.
I hate seafood. Especially when it’s fancy and you get baby squid that looks like they were just fresh out of the water with no preparation etc (part of the “fancy”). However, culturally I had absolutely no possibility to do anything but eat, smile and praise. The courses just kept coming, each one being more disgusting than the last.
Someone on lemmy posted this recently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_pineapple
My mother in law is Korean so out of curiosity I had her pick up the Korean dish made from it (meonggae) after seeing the lemmy post. It taste like the smell of a dank metal spiral stair case at Seaworld. Even through all the (imo) tasty spices and seasoning. I asked my MIL what she likes about it and she said, “it tastes so fresh because one bite and your transported to the sea”. Especially with the older generation, the context can make the food way more than the taste
That’s like the one seafood I don’t like, specifically because of the metal taste. You can be “transported to the sea” without needing to lick spoons while you’re underwater.
There’s a local grocery store chain here that has the most bland tasting everything in their prepared food counter. You’ve never eaten such tasteless food in your life. Poor seasoning? Try none at all. Everything tastes like cardboard.
Want to simulate what it’s like to eat food as a 30 year long habitual chain smoker, shop at Freson Bros.
Kellogg would cum his pants on the spot discovering such blandness could exist.
Their potato salad gave me depression. I didn’t know you could make a calzone taste like the box it came in.
I am weirdly intrigued. You make it sound like a curiosity
I seem to write better when I’m passionate about something. What gets me is none of it looks* off/shitty visually. Like the coleslaw looks appealing until you eat a mouth full and wish to die from your utter disappointment. If the Demiurge is real, one of his angels runs their kitchen just to fuck with people.
Or Famine, one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. Make food that looks good but doesn’t feed anyone, made of sawdust and wax.
I need to try this now
I actually like the taste of unseasoned food.
Anything I’ve bought at a sports stadium. The FootyScran twitter account catalogues some similar examples -
That’s straight up disrespectful
Looks like a euro burger on a US bun.
Oh… I’m so sorry. That should be illegal.
The FootyScran twitter account catalogues some similar examples
Relevant daily game: scrandle.
Did they scrape that off the bottom of one of the seats?
Durian fruit. That is the most vile thing I have ever tasted and the after taste lasted for like 5 hours.
That shit is fucking evil.
Once took durian chocolate home from a trip to Malaysia. Had to open it on the balcony. Tasted like someone vomited right into my mouth. Had to leave the chocolate on the balcony for a few days because I could not stomach the smell.
0/0 never again.
It’s not bad as long as you don’t think about baby poo while you eat it
“It’s not bad as long as you don’t breathe.”
I have that same mantra about life
I think the most famous description of Durian is “like eating custard in a sewer”. I’ve never tried it, since we don’t get it in the UK, but I’m curious. I had a Malaysian friend who loved it, but said many businesses and public transport would have signs up saying no Durian due to the smell.
It’s honestly not bad after a few tries. For me, the texture and overwhelming smell was a surprise at first but the actual taste isn’t that bad.
I am not a picky eater and enjoy many exotic, strong smelling/tasting foods.
But not durian.
I’ve eaten chicken feet, haggis, blood pudding, sisig, century egg, durian, dinuguan, tripe and tongue tacos, frog legs, snails, alligator, whole softshell crab, and probably a few more delights that I ought to remember. The only one I absolutely cannot stomach is the century egg.
The crab poboy sandwich with the legs hanging out of it was as a staple of my childhood, whenever we went to New Orleans I wanted one.
Alligator we can get here but it’s unremarkable in flavor.
How was the century egg prepared? I knew some guys in high school that decided to buy random stuff at the asian grocery store and they ate the century egg as if it was a regular boiled egg then threw up. I’ve had it in small pieces with congee and that was pretty good though.
I’d used it in a recipe to try and make congee, inspired by a pop-up in Seattle called Secret Congee. Theirs is good as hell, but my first try deterred me entirely from that questline.
Sisig mentioned rahhh 🇵🇭🔥💯
We’re a “barrel man on the mantle” type of family, you know?
I dunno what that means but I’m guessing it’s not good. You also did mention Dinuguan which I like also.
Matter of taste I guess - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_man_(novelty)
I like dinuguan and sisig, but I’ve definitely had plates of sisig I’ve regretted.
Oh, that 😂 I’m so ashamed I didn’t get it straight away even though I’m Filipino 😅
What type of sisig did you have? It’s traditionally made with pig’s head but if you don’t want that, you can’t go wrong with pork belly or chicken cut into small chunks 👍🏽
It was pig’s ear and other head stuff, but the real problem was that it was about half as fresh as it should have been. I only mentioned sisig in this post as a way of listing all the gnarly stuff I’ve liked over the years to compare it to the one thing I just can’t handle (except as an ingredient in one dish ever apparently). Little quiet karaoke place with no customers that used to be in Seattle, back when I lived stateside. Not surprised to find out that it’s gone, they needed a different crowd.
I had a hunch it’s the way it’s cooked, should always be fresh.
Camel fat. It tastes like how a camel smells.
Never smelt one but I assume really sweaty?
Musky and hairy, like a slightly damp dog that’s been out in the hot sun, but muskier.
My mouth is watering. No wait, those are tears of sadness.
Let me put this in my tinder bio immediately
Preface: All seafood makes me violently ill. I wish it weren’t so, but here we are.
While living in Switzerland we went to an ikea and found what I thought to be spreadable cheese in a toothpaste type tube. For reference lots of stuff over there comes in those types of tubes. Why not cheese?
I was so excited to get home and immediately tore the cap off and squeezed a giant dollop of what my mouth expected to be something like cheez whiz.
NOPE. NOPE FUCKING NOPE. It was some kind of fish paste with roe…
I puked for like 30 minutes straight and couldn’t get that taste out of my mouth until we found some kirsch liqueur that I also hate, but whose taste will overpower anything.
Picture related: The culprit
In their defense, it literally says “kaviar.”
Oh they have none of the blame! I am a big stupid man who didn’t bother to read it at all.
This is a staple food in Norway. The Norwegian variant is made with smoked cod roe.
Think the Swedish variant is some kind of freshwater fish? Can’t imagine IKEA will deliver culinary greatness tho’
I had that in Norway, and it is the best shit ever. I’d eat that in such vast quantities if it was as cheap and available here as it is in the Nordics.
Hah ! my dad loves this stuff. Couldn’t ever figure out why. As a child I would get excited seeing a tube of paste in the fridge thinking it might be concentrated milk.
Couple months ago I got a tonsillectomy. I got nerve damage in my tongue as a side effect of a tool they used and everything tastes different since. Tomato based pasta sauces have been the absolute worst, it tastes very metallic. The only normal type of food I can stand is Asian food that isn’t breaded/fried.
LOL, 80% of our home cooked meals either have tomatoes and/or fried Asian food. :)
Ordered indian takeout from a place in thr UK. The butter chicken tasted like they cooked a frozen chicken breast and strained a can of Spaghetti Os sauce over it.
Aspic
If you warm it up, it becomes soup!
Never had aspic but I had some unflavoured gelatin one time for a temporary restricted diet and I swear it tasted like licking the armpits and feet of a pig that had freshly been smeared with sheep shit.
That’s about accurate :3… honestly aspic doesn’t taste that bad? I mean it’s just meat and vegetables essentially, but the texture is horrible. It’s not like commercial gelatin you buy in packets, it’s more firm and grainy, while still having that wobble, and it just makes me gag
I actually just googled the unflavoured gelatin to see if other people agreed with me and it seems to be the specific “knox” brand I got. They must scrape it off the floor of a pig processing factory or something, I even tried mixing it with some gatorade and it tasted like eating solidified sweat right out lebron’s ass crack midgame
Thanks for painting that beautiful picture with your words
I’ve been called the lovechild of Picasso and shakespeare. Not by others, just myself. And not often, just once. Like 20 seconds ago.
It is boiled feet, skin and bones. The purifying process can only do so much.
I grew up hating a lot of vegetables because my grandfather - who I’m sure meant well - used to boil the life out of them. Green beans or broccoli would be soft, mushy, and greyish (while the water became green), and taste like unseasoned sadness.
One day when I was in grade school in the year nineteen eighty-bad, the cafeteria served hot dogs which had gone greyish and we were all told it was fine. They smelled awful and made a bunch of kids sick.
Either live octopus or raw stingray. The former is chopped up and dipped in spicy sauce to make it writhe. The latter absolutely reeks of piss (stingrays are full of ammonia apparently). Silkworm larva are surprisingly delicious.
I think rays are one of those animals that urinate through their skin, like sharks
That would explain the smell and the taste. The one upside to this is that stingray meat never really goes “bad”. It pickles itself. Which as I understand it is the reason people started eating it despite the awfulness.
Surprising strategy, but why not…
I can’t have octopus ever since I watched My Octopus Teacher. But am fine with squid
When I was in my twenties I met this girl. I got really sick, and she wanted to impress me and made soup. She knew nothing about cooking.
She boiled a chicken, did not separate anything. Chopped up a head of parsley and threw it in.
Then she served it to me with glistening eyes and a hopeful look. “I want you to feel better, I made soup for you”.
It was just basically grey chicken fat with bones, cartilage, skin floating in it.
Was your sickness related to your soap eating?
No that only lasted until I was about 10 years old
Did you poop bubbles?
you’re becoming annoying at this point
Aaaaand blocked
I’ve eaten a lot of pretty crazy stuff by western standards. The most challenging thing I have eaten was a giant water bug. The most challenging thing I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat was balut.
The water bug was definitely not the worst thing I’ve eaten though; it was unbelievably fragrant. Practically like eating perfume.
Esters I bet it’s rich in esters
Probably. I know it’s a pheromone and is much more concentrated in males making them more valuable/desired
My question for folks, though…:
When faced with eating a giant water bug for the first time, would you bite the head side first or the butt side first?I struggled with this decision…
ETA: (for reference)
Ok…it’s not a competition…but you win…
Is that someone people actually eat?
Probably, entomophagy is not that uncommon outside of western countries.
It is popular in a lot of Southeast Asia. You can even buy commercial chili pastes with the essence of water bug in them.
Balut actually tastes pretty good chicken and egg. Even though it was a duck egg. But yah I could never do it again.
Giant water bug? I love those things!
Apparently none y’all have tried vegemite.
Come at me Australia!
Vegemite tastes like what I imagine the under-side of a cow to taste. It tastes like the smell of road surface. It should have a warning label: Not to be taken orally. It’s clearly a prank that Australia plays with everyone.
Also, I was born in England, but have lived in Australia for 25 years.
Don’t forget Marmite. I can eat that straight out of the bottle. Yum.
🤮
Funny thing is, I hate 98% of all vegetables. They literally make me ill. But I can eat marmite all day long. Go figure.
Vegemite is just brewers yeast post-brew, with added salt. It’s was invented to use up the leftover brewers yeast after brewing beer (well really, Marmite was, and Vegemite was invented as an Australian version of Marmite).
Brits like the taste of beer, Brits made Marmite. Aussies like the taste of beer… Vegemite.
Its ok if yanks don’t like the taste of beer, we get it, we’ve tried your beers.
I tried it as a kid when my school had some kind of international day and lunch was a catered buffet of tons of different food from around the world.
It was basicslly pure salt on my tastebuds.
