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And did you like it?
If anyone says Louise I will be very upset
Drank rather than eaten but fermented horse milk in Kyrgyzstan. It's like fizzy, slightly alcoholic milk and is grim to my Western taste buds.
I tried dog in North Korea. Tastes like lamb so not all bad.
Whale in Norway, it was ok.
If anyone says Louise I will be very upset
If no one says Louise I will be very upset
Andouillette. No, I did t like it. It was awful.
A whole lot of weird stuff in Mexico - I avoided the tarantula with orange segments, but Escamoles tacos were quite nice actually
Burger toast
Pizza toast
Meh…
Deep-fried ants in Bogota. Kind of smokey and crunchy. Would make a nice bar snack 🙂
Oh, and Snickers spring rolls in a Nepalese tea house below Annapurna Base Camp, which were ace.
bought something that looked like a scotched egg from a cambodian street market. Bit into it, and sure enough, breadcrumbs around a meaty layer. Texture beyond that felt a little odd, and so my (now) wife who was also thinking of trying it had a look. Yep, that's a scotch egg made with a fertilized egg, and the remaining half of a small bird, beak/feathers in tact were there to see.
I wasn't a fan.
I think a week spent in China a while back were the locals were often trying to reproduce what they thought the tourists wanted...so, mounds of (now cold) greasy fried eggs for breakfast, sour vinegary tea, and so on. On the plus side; lost some weight
Had the 'normal' weird food stuff like Durian (which isn't nearly as bad as some would lead you believe)
There stuff that sounds just so gross I wouldn't go near it, like Kiviak
Balut in the Philippines, was rank but I don't like cold eggs anyways. In reality like a chicken omelet.
I think a week spent in China a while back were the locals were often trying to reproduce what they thought the tourists wanted…so, mounds of (now cold) greasy fried eggs for breakfast, sour vinegary tea, and so on. On the plus side; lost some weight
Weird stuff happens when tourists rock up. Uyuni in Bolivia - the town on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni salt flats - had three pizzerias back in the late 90s, presumably because they'd decided that's what gringos ate. The one we tried served up something that tasted like a giant digestive biscuit covered in melted processed cheese. It was pretty rank.
A friend of mine travelled regularly to China for work and used to call the stuff there 'mystery food'. Her basic rule was never to ask what it was.
Travelled a lot around Asia with my job in the late 90s and early 00s and ate some proper weird stuff. My philosophy was that it was better not to ask. Snakes was OK, shark was rank and the yellowy rubbery stuff that looked like pieces of wetsuit tasted like it was probably pieces of wetsuit.
As a more experiences colleague said to me before my first trip out… “If it looks like a duck’s head on a stick it is probably a duck’s head on a stick”.
During one dinner with customers in Taiwan he told me that the only way to survive what was about to happen was to discretely tip away the evil fire water that was being passed around into a half full beer glass when nobody was looking. BUT REMEMBER NOT TO DRINK THE TAINTED BEER! At the end of the night we were the only two left standing. One of the senior guys on the customer’s side was asleep on the floor in the corner of the restaurant.
Happy days. Not sure that I would want to do it again now that I’m in my 50s.
Salad.
I had a stew made from nuts that had been eaten by elephants in Botswana and shat out in Namibia where we were - pretty good!
Raw minced-beef in a restaurant in New Malden. Smothered in sesame oil it was edible, but I wouldn't choose to eat it again. We had asked the waitress to choose something for us because nothing sounded familiar.
My brother is married to a Chinese lady. We spent a while there before their wedding, and there were some "interesting" foods.
Always nice when a cooked chicken is cooked and sliced, then reassembled to look like a chicken - head poking up and eye sockets staring at you...
A few things, I hid in the bottom of the broth bowl.
The fried grubs at the wedding were ok, probably the weirdest thing I've actually consumed.
Guinea pig in Peru
Shark and whale in Iceland
Horse milk products in Mongolia, particularly boiled milk (was quite nice), and then chunks of horse cheese liberally slathered in horse cream. Imagine dipping a chunk of parmesan into a massive pot of clotted cream. Absolutely lovely, and I guess you don't need to worry about calories too much when you're living in a ger (it's not a yurt, it's a ger, they get a bit touchy about that) and the outside temperature is -40c
Year 7 home economics spag bol.
I mean, we sent him in with all the right ingredients, but what came home was, well, weird.
'Mountain chicken' in China. It was OK, if you like frog.
Parts* (and secretions**) of other mammals.
*Much of which is mechanically-retrieved from a carcass and then stuffed into the stomach-lining of another mammal.
**Some of the which are rotten, combined with mold.
I went to a bar in Japan that had shochu with giant hornets in it, you're supposed to swallow the hornet. My colleague was a fairly crazy party dude from Texas who was keen to try it. I managed two, the first one went straight down but I gagged a bit on the second one. My mate gagged on the first one and gave up.
A bouncer at a pub I used to go to tried some pickled boiled eggs that this Philippino woman dared everyone to eat. They have a half-grown chick inside. The bouncer was a really nice guy, but had a reputation to keep up so decided to do the "I'm a really hard dude, I can eat anything" act. He bit into the egg and then said he could feel the bones crunching in his mouth. His stomach went into involuntary spasms followed by a sprint to the bogs and revisiting his lunch.
Limpets, live and fresh off a rock, served with a little seaweed, also fresh.
You have to sneak up on them with a knife, get them off first try or they hang on like hell.
It tasted a bit like the sea... and a snail. The texture is pretty chewy. I can see why you wont find them on a menu.
The Mother in Laws cooking....
She once made Apple Crumble with crumble mix that had been in the Fridge for months thst had turned to cheese...
Dont think her nose worked...
Also a broad selection of 1970s home brew beer.. Brewdog obviously have stolen all those recipes.
Crocodile, which was rubbish. Kind of like a greasy chicken thing.
Have eaten snails a few times and like them but unless I can find a weird vegetable I’ll likely not get more adventurous as that.
BLUE muffins this morning.
Mrs. Stanley has insisted I take part in the "ZOE blue poop challenge".
Ate the hideous things at 7am this morning. I've already done a red poop... probably owing to all the beetroot I ate yesterday :-/
When in france ( or any where else) if there is something on the menu I don't know I order it
Memorable meals include sausages made of pike, duck neck salad and the best - a whole pigeon complete with head and eyes.
This technique has not been tried in the far east tho. could get very interesting
Fermented yak's milk in Ladakh
Prairie oyster with a turtle egg {I only found out later} in El Salvador
Tripe in Stockport
I've had Durian (in Malaysia) which I liked.
Baby Squid in salt (in China) they looked like peanuts and were OK
Goose Feet (in China) tasted OK but not much meat on a foot!
Chicken nuggets made of the chickens knee joint (in China) and no meat!
But the worst thing by far was Sausage made of Kudu antelope (in South Africa). Grey meat, lots of grisle an a really rank, 'gamey' flavour bleuuuurrrrggggghhhh
This technique has not been tried in the far east tho. could get very interesting
That would be a travel/food TV show I’d watch!
Cheese from a bergerie in Corsica whilst doing the GR20 many years ago. I excitedly opened the silver foil wrapper to reveal something that had mites on the rind and the middle resembled amber, yes amber, think Jurassic Park. It was rather potent too. I ended up scraping it into dust shavings to add to dehydrated camping food. Not to be repeated.
Nepalese tea, which has rancid yak's butter emulsified into it with a thing that looks like a plunger schooshed up and down into a dolly tub. Salty. Actually drunk a fair bit of it because it's what you got offered as an honoured guest, so you've really got to drink it. Could be just a massive piss take on European tourists of course.
Donkey stew with Polenta. Speciality of Verona, like a thick beef stroganoff in style and taste.
Dog treats off the counter in Pets at Home. Because it horrifies the person on the till and anyone else in the queue.
A 2p coin
I quite liked shark.
Chicken feet {'walkaways') in SA
Androuiette in France
chicken feet, and cat in Vietnam. And biscuits with little red insect eggs on
the usual crocodile, camel, shark, etc in Australia.
And androuiette in france.
Several kinds of rat/guinea pig type things (Agouti, Paca,..), and also Tapir, Armadillo, and Caiman crocodile.
All in French Guiana, and all except the caiman was in the same buffet banquet (which also had "conventional" delicacies such as wild boar).
The caiman had no flavour. Tapir was probably the best of the above.
Didn't get to try Iguana. I think there's only one type that's nice, and they didn't have any available whenever we tried.
I was never so glad about being vegetarian than when I lived in Taiwan. My first evening there my new boss organised a bbq for me and on the grill were chicken heads and chicken feet. A lot of restaurants also had dog on the menu and the aboriginies of Taiwan eat monkeys.
The strangest thing I actually ate there was green egg. They are hard boiled eggs but the egg white is clear and the yoke green. This achieved by soaking the eggs in horse's urine for a very long time.
The other speciality of Taiwan is stinky tofu. I was given this to eat at a dinner party and had to try not to gag while eating it as I was surrounded by my expectant hosts eagerly watching me. If you've never tried it, it has the same taste as the smell of a pig farm. I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth for days after. Cut to a few months later and a new collegue arrives from Australia wanting to try stinky tofu. So I took him to the local night market and ordered some for him. He took one bite and nearly threw up on the spot. He said. 'I'm not eating that!'. 'Give it here!' I said and took a bite. This time I actually quite liked it and it became my favourite food in Taiwan after!
Chicken's feet are actually pretty good. Look a bit scary but I was surprised at how much flesh there is on them. Not really any different from eating the wings when you think about it.
Tofu, the non-stinky kind.
I can't work out how it's food.
If anyone says Louise I will be very upset
Spoil sport. Even more annoying as it is true, I'm not adventurous with my food!
In the grand scheme of things, not all that weird, but...
When a young teenager, I went on holiday to France a few times with my Dad and Stepmum. We always drove, and stayed a week or two in holiday cottages.
At one the owners of the cottage invited us to tea at their house one day, and we were served a small bird of some description, head and all, kind of just plonked on a plate. I think that meal turned my sister vegetarian.
On another trip, we went to the visitor center at a nuclear power station (in retrospect, I think my parents were sick of listening to the kids moaning and were running out of ideas for daytrips). For whatever reason we had a full camembert cheese in the car which in the heat was rapidly heading into "totally rank" levels of ripeness, so to avoid it stinking the car out we ate it in the car park of the power station. Super-runny cheese eaten on its own with our hands, next to a nuclear power station; for some reason it has stuck in my memory.
Maybe calf brain in France? It was served in a pastry box and was delicious. Also had horse in Roubaix.
I've not eaten much weird stuff in Asia but a vegetarian friend had to visit China on business a lot - he'd explain 'no meat' and they'd bring him a series of increasingly unusual sea creatures, such as sea slugs.
Marmite.
I used to travel frequently for work across Asia , so have quite a few dinning experiences.
Yokohama, Japan - My sushi (Cuttlefish) was still alive and kept looking at me,
Seoul, Korean BBQ - Live Baby Octopus that tried to make a bid for freedom and was cut up and hot-plated.
China, Always best not to ask what you are being served and decline to pick your victim (Frog, Chicken etc) from the buckets outside the restaurant. If it looked really dodgy I used to become
an Instant veggie.
I remember surviving one trip across China that lasted two weeks until the last night in Shanghai where I had a rare steak (Idiot!) at a Western restaurant , which resulted in the worst food poisoning of my Life. The next morning I dragged my sorry ass onto that 747 for the flight home, even needing to bolt to the loo as we pushed off from the gate. It was a very long 12 1/2 hour flight home.
I seem to remember shark in Aussie chip shops was referred to as 'flake'. I bet a lot of us are unaware of what we've eaten, eg donkey in salami. Horse steak in Portugal was nice if a bit big and marbled and hasn't horse reared its head in English supermarkets in recent times?
Rocky Mountain Oysters when I was living and working in Alberta for a couple of years.
100% cowboy country.
Spicy sheep brains in ****stan.
At one the owners of the cottage invited us to tea at their house one day, and we were served a small bird of some description, head and all, kind of just plonked on a plate. I think that meal turned my sister vegetarian
Possibly Ortolan. I'd probably eat it, but certainly wouldn't want it if you see what I mean. Nasty Frenchmen.
Oh yeah, I had Brawn once, that was nice. Was a long time ago, but I think it's some kind of pigs brain pate that's served in the head. edit - yep, I was right. Recipe
A chicken parmo from Middlesbrough! Only once and never again!
Crocodile, which was rubbish. Kind of like a greasy chicken thing.
That’s interesting, I had a couple of crocodile burgers in Northern Queensland and I found them quite good. Perhaps the addition of onion, spices and egg masked the texture a bit
I also had some kangaroo steaks which were great
Another shout for andouillette. Not weird, looks deceptively like a sausage. Tastes very much like farmyard sweepings. Utterly inedible.
Cafes in turkey have plates of rams' bollocks arranged conveniently in pairs on lettuce leaves, racked and displayed proudly in glass cabinets. Gray and undressed sheep brains similarly. Was never tempted, for some reason, but friends who tried these delicacies assure me they taste very much as you'd expect bollocks and brains to taste.
I lived in France for a while and searched out and ate lots of classic french dishes so things like veal head, calves brains, sweet breads etc.
I can eat anything but andouillette
assure me they taste very much as you’d expect bollocks and brains to taste.
Nutty?
Insects on a stick in honey in China (fine)
Bullfrog in China (fine, like chicken)
Andoulette in France (foul, absolutely foul)
A burger from a roadside van on the A5 in Capel Curig which gave me the worst smash hits of my life for a week. Never, ever again.
Rigatoni con la pajata in Rome. The la pajata bit is the intestines of suckling calf that has only had its mothers milk. The milk cooks into a ricotta/ cottage cheese consistency. So basically a ricotta sausage in tomato sauce. It's a classic Roman dish, and is lovely.
Vegan 'bacon'. I mean, wtf?
I can only trump some of these bizarre dishes with nothing as strange as chicken. Chicken in the US of A. My kind host was so pleased to have got some really great 'super tender' chicken.
In all honestly, it was like flavour free blanc mange. Soft, no identifiable texture, and with the taste of whatever sauce was added to it.
LSD
Bury black pudding.
Tastes like I imagine a poultice would.
I can't remember what it's called but it was a Norwegian thing.. Basically fermented pickled cabbage and some other veg with a liberal amount of very small fermented pickled crabs.
Didn't taste bad to be fair but smelled a bit funky.
Oh and kopi luak coffee.
The fresh beans are eaten by civets (kinda like a weasel type creature). And shat out.
They are then collected and made into coffee... Was actually very good coffee.
About the strangest I’ve had are traditional French - frog’s legs and snails. And traditional Scottish - deep fried Mars bar. Both delicious!
The weirdest for me is Jellyfish in Singapore. Nothing to enjoy really. Pretty tasteless and a strange texture...kind of soft and crunchy at the same time.
[New militant vegeterian]
Another previously sentient creature
[/New militant vegeterian]
More seriously, my Romanian housemate prepared a massive bowl (a huge kitchen mizing bowl) of some sort of mayonnaise salad for the house with chopped peppers, eggs, onions and pickled veg.
I tried to be polite but don't think I covered it very well 🤢
More seriously, my Romanian housemate prepared a massive bowl (a huge kitchen mizing bowl) of some sort of mayonnaise salad for the house with chopped peppers, eggs, onions and pickled veg.
Russian salad, large Tupperware tubs of it are much loved all over eastern europe and central Asia lol
I see all your delicacies from far flung places and raise you a deep fried Mars bar from Edinburgh!
I have had many of those listed, fermented mares milk, yak butter tea, crickets, tarantulas, snake, roaches of some kind,tripe, brawn, eyes, balls, goats head,little squirrels bone in,frogs, most I have been fairly indifferent to but some kind of fried cocoon in china was unpleasant, a duck sausage from a chinese supermarket that was just like coating your mouth with pure grease and some weird Korean blood jelly, I think its generally the texture's that are worse than the flavours
Hostess Twinkie
Cheese from a bergerie in Corsica
Whilst walking in Corsica we were convinced the chef was having a competition to see what shite he could serve guests, a sort of rice pudding omelette and some of the rankest cheese known to mankind was put on our plates
In terms of recognisable things a few things spring to mind
Grilled Chicked Arseholes (Taiwan - my local windsurfing mates thought it was hilarious to feed me these then tell me later. They're very tasty though so I just kept on eating them)
Frozen raw ostrich (Japan) - not so great if you chew slowly and it melts in the mouth)
Various forms of intestines (China) - mostly nice but I struggle with stomach lining when the texture is very obvious
Pigs ears and Chicken feet (Taiwan) - taste is OK, texture rubbish, lots of effort little nutrition - struggled to see the point
But the reality is the worst, nastiest things are probably whatever is in Sainsburys/Tesco etc sausages. It's just hidden. I much prefer the Asian approach were at least you know what you're eating.
£2.46 in various loose change.. It was slightly metallic and not at all like chicken
By the stadards of this thread my most unusual food is almost everyday, guga.
A local favourite in Ness, Lewis where my mum is from. Salted flegling gannet.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/scotland-blog/2014/jan/27/scotland-conservation-gugahunt
Surstromming in Sweden. Baltic herring fermented in a barrel then canned, where it ferments again. The stench is beyond description.
Snake wine in Vietnam, got served a shot of it from a massive jar full of snakes infused in alcohol.
Apparently good for virility…no effect apart from feeling a bit hissed.
Hippo - tasted like tough pork
Sea cucumber - vilest thing I've ever put in my mouth
Whale - like beef
Alligator - like chicken
Shark - can't tell it from swordfish
Andouillette - it's a sausage
EDIT - more or less anything in Norway.
Cheese. Absolutely disgusting. Smells like sweaty feet and tastes awful. I won't touch any food with cheese in/on. Yes, that includes pizza.
Seafood. All kinds. The smell alone makes me want to throw up.
I’ve had seal, shark and whale compliments of the Icelandics - whale blubber may as well have been a piece of well worn neoprene wetsuit, a bit salty and chewy. Bad experience once with l’escargot in France and frog’s legs were just too fiddly to eat. Steak tartare is a bit odd - just raw minced steak.
I was doing some business stuff in Thailand and got invited to a traditional meal. The head honcho decides to appoint me guest of honour and his oppo brings out a Tupperware box with ‘local delicacies’ and gives me a very yellow and very old looking egg - the shell was crazed and it wasn’t very bird egg shaped. Doing the honourable thing, I cut it in 2 and gave half to my colleague. It was bright yellow inside and a very, pungent cloying taste. I’m assuming it was some sort of reptilian egg pickled in urine. Funnily enough, never seen anything on a Thai restaurant menu.
Dogfood, cat biscuits, Squirrel... I am so glad I gave up alcohol years ago