The most disgusting thing you've ever eaten

[7/4]

No more sausage for me...

[tonym]

Or you could take one of these,

, keep it in the dark allowing it only to feed on millet, grapes and figs until it's four times its normal size, drown it alive in Armagnac (nice French liqueor), cook it to a burnt out crisp.

The secret is entirely in theeating. First you cover your head with a traditional embroidered cloth. Then place the entire four-ounce bird into your mouth. Only its

head should dangle out from between your lips. Bite off the head and

discard. L'ortolan should be served immediately; it is meant to be so

hot that you must rest it on your tongue while inhaling rapidly

through your mouth. This cools the bird, but its real purpose is to

force you to allow its ambrosial fat to cascade freely down your

throat.

When cool, begin to chew. It should take about 15 minutes to work your

way through the breast and wings, the delicately crackling bones, and

on to the inner organs. Devotees claim they can taste the bird's

entire life as they chew in the darkness: the wheat of Morocco, the

salt air of the Mediterranean, the lavender of Provence. The pea-sized

lungs and heart, saturated with Armagnac from its drowning, are said

to burst in a liqueur-scented flower on the diner's tongue. Enjoy with

a good Bordeaux.

Then blow up some small atoll in the South Pacific for parlour games.

[Christiern]

I have eaten whale and horse meat, snails, frogs legs, ram's testicles, and sheep's eyes, but none of that came close to being as disgusting as fish. I love shellfish, but the other kind--with the fins, scales, and piercing eyes--is something you will never see on my plate!*

"Have to admit that Miles served me fish for lunch at his house 32 years ago, but I suffered as I picked my way around the bones, pushing the skin aside.

"You don't like the skin?," he whispered.

"No," I answered, somewhat embarrassed.

"We shan't waste it," he said, scooping the skin from my plate with his fork.

[Big Wheel]

For some reason that story gave me an image of Miles-as-Gollum:

"Fisshhhhhhhhhh....we loves it, O yes, my precious!"

Edited September 16, 2004 by Big Wheel

[Shrdlu]

I remember the kids' reaction when a Sunday School teacher stated that John the Baptist ate bugs. The word "gross" was in its prime at that time.

There was a joke about a posh lady in an English restaurant who was sending back a tongue sandwich. "Tongue!", she said. "I would never eat something that has been in an animal's mouth! Fetch me something else." So they brought her a boiled egg!

[Tim McG]

Has anyone actually stopped to think about what honey is? Isn't it pretty much bee cud?

Bee barf.

And I'd like a glass of cold gravy with a hair in it, please.

Edited September 17, 2004 by GoodSpeak

[Tim McG]

The most disgusting thing I've eaten?

That's easy:

Brussels Sprouts.

Ack.

Edited September 17, 2004 by GoodSpeak

[LAL]

Several smallish red ants (by accident) - much more pungent than any wasabi or hot mustard I've ever eaten.

Boiled chicken feet & pig intestines.

[tonym]

That reminds me, when were kids, we used to have pig's trotters (before the corrective surgery ! ). You could still see those little hairs. Uck.

[Jazzdog]

Great thread. I have put some nasty ass things in my mouth, potted meat (dad used to spread this on sammiches back when I was a kid, I am sure there is a full unopened can in the dark recesses of my parents pantry), a pizza in Prague, sushi anywhere, but nothing can top my adventure in an Brittish pub one chilly rain soaked day at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival 1994.

We had an hour long break in between a marathon day at the festival, the matinee showing was Midsummer Nights Dream, and following intermission, we got Macbeth and something else, Twth Night maybe, it was long ago. Anywhay, a group of about 5 or 6 of us found this little pub nearby and stopped in for lunch. If I had been thinking clearly I would have grabbed some bangers and mash, or shepperds pie, something familliar. Instead I ordered the Steak and Kidney Pie, the pubs special that day. The pull of the whole thing was that the ingedients were marinated in a sauce based of Guinness, the whole soup packaged in a neat pot pie shaped confection.

My order was met with some derision from the crowd as I assured them this would be delicious. So lunch comes and we all dig in, the crowd watched in abayence as I plunged my fork into the flaky brown crust, The room was punctured with the aroma of freshly cooked steak andkidneys. Folks, I dunno if you have ever dared eat kidney, but it felt and tasted like sticking a boiled nerf football into my mouth.

I maybe took two more bites, the meat was grisly. My vegtables tasted great, so did my pints, but the steak and kidney pie was a nightmare. I ate a Mars bar and sat thru another 5 hours of shakespeare in the cold wet night of Southwest England

[chris olivarez]

It took me awhile to think of something but I finally came up with it. I was vacationing in Gold Hill,Oregon and we stopped in this "Mexican Food" restaurant. Since I had my doubts about someone in the Pacific Northwest to be able to fix Mexican food properly I ordered something I thought would be safe. What I ordered was a Chicken Burrito. Imagine my dismay when I discovered the Chicken in the Burrito came from a can. Now canned Chicken might work for some but it didn't work for me. I took two bites of it and that was it.

I gave the rest of the Chicken Burrito to my friend's dog. It worked for the dog.

[Jazzmoose]

Oh, Chris; you have my sympathy! I ordered a burrito last time I paid a visit to my father in Oregon, and still shudder thinking about it.

[chris olivarez]

Thanks JM it was a shuddering kind of experience for me too. That damn dog was delighted though.

[Upright Bill]

Not disgusting but odd for us USAers. In Korea, our hosts had Dominos Pizza deliver a Squid and Pea pizza and in Taiwan we got a Tuna and Corn pizza from the same chain.

[Big Wheel]

We have a new champion, ladies and gentlemen: Stinky tofu.

So I'm wandering through San Francisco Chinatown today kind of aimlessly, and I just keep getting hungrier and hungrier. I start looking for a no-frills dumpling joint, not really a restaurant, just a place where I can grab a few cheap pork or shrimp dumplings and then maybe sit down somewhere and scarf them to tide me over until dinner. I go back and forth and can't find the one place I know is like this. So I just wander down Washington Street and I finally see a place that's more of a lunch counter, and they've got no dim sum, but the menu outside mentions 4 "weekend specialties", one of which is "spicy bean curd". Well, I loves me some good tofu, and the spicier the better. And a lot of people seem to be eating there for the weird hour of 3 pm. And it's only 4 bucks.

I sit myself down at one of the stools at the counter and realize that this place is even dodgier than I thought while standing outside. But fortunately, my seat is right in front of the health inspection chart that restaurants here are required by law to display, and this place got a 95 out of 100! Then I squint a little harder at it.

That is not a 9. It's a 7.

In my seven weeks in this city, I have managed to patronize a whole lot of restaurants. I have never even seen a restaurant here that scored below 92.

I begin to be afraid.

Also, this place fucking reeks.

"Spicy bean curd," I say to the nice girl behind the counter. She reacts like she did not hear me correctly, but five hours into the aftermath, I'm beginning to suspect that she was just in shock. I point to the line on the menu to make it clear what I am ordering. She nods solemnly.

"Chou Dou-fu," she calls to the man hovering over the stove. Oh, fuck. I'm pretty into Asian food, and, although I've never tried it, I think I know what Chou Dou-fu is. This is no spicy tofu, no nice comforting ma-bo to-fu with some yummy pork and chili sauce. This is stinky tofu, the stuff of legend. something my outdated cookbooks had been led me to believe cannot even be found in this country. And I have just accidentally ordered it. If you ever order something tofu-ish in a very authentic Eastern Chinese or Taiwanese restaurant and hear the word chou in front of dou-fu, I suggest you run. Don't worry about offending the management or not asking for the check. If you have already been served appetizers or beverages, throw a sawbuck on the table and get the fuck out of there.

Back to me. At this point, every single customer sitting at the counter audibly gasps. I shit you not. Eight or nine Chinese people inhaled in unison upon hearing what I was eating. Even though some of them were eating it themselves, they could not believe that the geeky white boy had just ordered chou dou-fu.

"You like the smelly tofu?" the woman next to me says, incredulous.

"There's a first time for everything," I reply sheepishly.

Everyone in the place laughs. There's way more nervousness in that laugh than I feel comfortable with.

"You are very brave," she says.

The seat of my pants and the top of my barstool are beginning to disagree with her assessment.

What is stinky tofu like? The bad news: contrary to accounts I have read describing the smell as fecal, it smells like a rotting corpse that no one has attended to for two weeks.

The good news: It tastes like a corpse that has only been left out for about 48 hours.

I ate the whole plate, all 12 or so cubes. They got slightly more tolerable the more I ate, but I'm not sure whether this was due to oral numbness or simple determination to soldier through to the end so as not to look like an ungrateful asshole.

I pay and stumble out, realizing that I have reached my gastronomical limit. This is the only thing I have ever eaten that I cannot see myself ever eating again. I search for a nice bubble tea place to try and take the taste out of my mouth with the sweetness. It does almost nothing. I keep burping up the aftertaste of stinky tofu. I grab some leftover, end-of-the-day beef dumplings from a dim sum joint, which help a little bit, but the aftertaste doesn't fully disappear until I get home and down a cold beer.

Why is the inside of my mouth still tingling, though? I thought it might be the bacteria on the tofu, but I brushed my teeth and everything still feels funny.

I wanted to write the definitive essay on stinky tofu, but it looks like I've been beaten to the punch. This is the same exact place I went to. One of the other patrons of the establishment mentioned to me that it's "the best, it has the smelliest one." I don't want to contemplate what second-rate versions must be like.

[Free For All]

What is stinky tofu like? The bad news: contrary to accounts I have read describing the smell as fecal, it smells like a rotting corpse that no one has attended to for two weeks.

The good news: It tastes like a corpse that has only been left out for about 48 hours.

Not even sure I want to know how you know this, Mr. Dahmer.

[patricia]

HAGGIS- Scot national dish --sheep stomach stuffed with intestines and who  knows what and boiled--Single malt scotch poured liberally over it. Toasts to Bobby Burns. Lawzy.

   

Nonsense - haggis is fantastic. Some of the best ones are made by Charles MacSween in Edinburgh. They don't have intestines in them but rather are a mixture of minced sheep liver, heart and lungs mixed with oatmeal, onion, suet and spices and sewn up in a sheep's stomach. Yum! Haggis is traditionally served with mashed potatoes and swede.

Thank you Phil. My late mother was Scottish, born and raised in Edinburgh, and according to her, haggis is much like her turkey dressing. Occasionally her dressing was oatmeal, eggs, onions and the stuff that came in that little bag inside the bird, chopped up finely and cooked inside the turkey. It was heavily spiced and is good, by itself, with mashed potatoes and lots of turkey gravy.

Edited April 24, 2006 by patricia

[kinuta]

Japanese Food:

1. Boiled pig intestines with buckwheat dumplings - both of them the identical shade of gray.

2. Liquified squid, innards and all (hold the ink), blenderized into applesauce-like consistancy and served in a small bowl (as an appetizer).

3. Natto: not exactly sure what it is but I suspect it's fermented soybeans mixed with some kind of turd.

I really can't imagine what dishes 1 & 2 are and judging from the lurid description I don't want to know but I absolutely love natto. It's indeed semi fermented soy beans but you must mix it with a little hot mustard and a splash of soy sauce, stir briskly until it forms a foamy goo and dollop on top of white rice. It is especially good with nori, which is the dried seaweed used in some kinds of sushi.

[kinuta]

The most disgusting thing I've eaten?

That's easy:

Brussels Sprouts.

Ack.

It takes all kinds, I love sprouts.

Some things I hate are octopus, in any shape or form, I loathe it.

Korean cold noodles. Called 'reimen' in Japan are the pits. I has kind of indigestible hard super chewyness that leaves me wanting to barf.

The dreaded ' shiokara'. This is the afore mentioned squid feet in a kind of chilli goo. Guaranteed nausea making.

'Macha' is the super bitter green tea used in Ye Olde Japanese tea ceremony and truly vile beyond words.

Any of the numerous kinds of boiled intestinal dishes that are popular here. The whole spectrum of offal cuisine is laughingly called ' stamina' food in Japan. All uniformly hideous and inedible.

'Beef bowl' called gyudon in Japan is especially awful with great clumps of vile white cow fat just waiting to block your arteries. It is wolfed down by the truckload by risk oblivious suicidal idiots.

Edited April 24, 2006 by kinuta

[Jazzmoose]

Barb and I went to Huddle House today.

If you've never been there, it's a place that actually makes you miss Denny's...

[brownie]

Lamproie (Lamprey on the wrong side of the Atlantic) is one of the most disgusting fish I ever saw:

Ventral view of lamprey's sucking mouthparts.

Habitat / Food: Adult lampreys are parasitic on a large variety of fishes and marine mammals and seek the largest individuals of a species. They attach using a suctorial mouth which has pointed teeth arranged in concentric circles (as seen in the photo). Once attached, the lamprey opens wounds on the prey's skin using a rasping tongue and sharp teeth and feeds on blood and other bodily tissue. Smaller sea lampreys are bottom dwellers along coasts and on the continental shelf.

But it's delicious.

Just missed the Lamproie festival this weekend in the village of Sainte-Terre when I was in Bordeaux last week!

http://www.sainte-terre.com/

You can click on 'Fete de la Lamproie' for details of the festivities and on 'gastronomie' for a recipe of the great dish Lamproie à la Bordelaise! All in Bordeaux-tinted english!

Bordeaux people let the fish cook in the local wine, not the fish blood

I usually avoid having a look at the beast and concentrate on eating this rare delicacy!

Bon appétit!

[rostasi]

Easy:

Durian

Imagine eating a custard tart over an open sewer.

"Writing in 1856, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace provides a much-quoted description of the flavour of the durian:

A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy.[14]

Wallace cautions that "the smell of the ripe fruit is certainly at first disagreeable"; more recent descriptions by westerners can be more graphic. Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says:

... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.[15]

The unusual odour has prompted many people to search for an accurate description. Comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray, and used surgical swabs.[16] The wide range of descriptions for the odour of durian may have a great deal to do with the wide variability of durian odour itself. Durians from different species or clones can have significantly different aromas, and the degree of ripeness has a great effect as well.[17] In fact, three scientific analyses of the composition of durian aroma — from 1972, 1980, and 1995 — each found a different mix of volatile compounds, including many different organosulfur compounds, with no agreement on which may be primarilly responsible for the distinctive odour.[18]

This strong odour can be detected half a mile away by animals, thus luring them. In addition, the fruit is extremely appetising to a variety of animals, from squirrels to mouse deer, pigs, orangutan, elephants, and even carnivorous tigers. While some of these animals eat the fruit and dispose of the seed under the parent plant, others swallow the seed with the fruit and then transport it some distance before excreting it, the seed being dispersed as the result.[19] The thorny armored covering of the fruit may have evolved because it discourages smaller animals, since larger animals are more likely to transport the seeds far from the parent tree."[20]

No fine?

Edited April 24, 2006 by rostasi

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

Lamproie is one of the most disgusting fish I ever saw:

Ventral view of lamprey's sucking mouthparts.

I agree. There's been a dramatic upswing in the number of sea lamprey in some of the Great Lakes. Every time I do a little shallow diving in Lake Superior w/my wet suit, I expect to encounter that one-in-a-billion monster Lamprey behind a cluster of underwater boulders that thinks my leg is a large lake trout!

[brownie]

I agree. There's been a dramatic upswing in the number of sea lamprey in some of the Great Lakes. Every time I do a little shallow diving in Lake Superior w/my wet suit, I expect to encounter that one-in-a-billion monster Lamprey behind a cluster of underwater boulders that thinks my leg is a large lake trout!

Revenge should be sweet. You just eat the damn beast! It's yummy!

Although it looks like the Great Lakes lamprey is not edible. The lamproie in southwestern France is found in rivers only!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

This is a tasty thread!

I generally like African food, though I think few westerners would.

My wife, on her last trip to South Africa, found a new food to try out, called Bobotie. Apparently it's an Africanised version of some ideas brought over by Malaysian immigrants. It's mainly a stew of minced beef (or lamb), with a few veg like potatoes, plus fruit - pineapple, sultanas, mangos etc - plus egg custard. We love it!

There's something incredibly hot in West Africa. I didn't catch what it was called when I came across it when I ate with a family of traditional musicians I'd hooked up with on my first visit. I was told not to eat it if I found it in the bowl from which we were all eating. But, unlike all the other incredibly hot things I've come across, it wasn't brightly coloured; it looked a bit like an piece of potato. But it was solid fire! And neither water nor beer would put it out! I hate rice pudding but, when offered a bowl of rice pudding with assurances that it would put out the fire, accepted gratefully. And it worked!

I did once have something in West Africa that made me very ill for a few days, but I don't know what it was. It was partly my own fault as I'd visited several African families around lunchtime and had been persuaded to join them, so ended up having bits of three lunches.

Actually, the most objectively awful thing I have ever had was brought back from Zimbabwe by a former colleague who was a part time missionary. This was a handful of dried pupae of some caterpillar-like creature. He DARED me to eat them. So I did. They were a bit dry, but all right.

MG

PS Restaurant food from the Francophone areas of Africa is wonderful; sensational; delightful. The French influence. Food in restaurants in the former British colonies shows the influence of English cooking at its most disgraceful.

Edited April 24, 2006 by The Magnificent Goldberg