It Came From the Chat: Adventures in Eating
This week's chat revealed as lot about our readers' tastes -- literally -- when we asked for stories of the weirdest thing people ever ate on a trip. Less than an hour later, we were knee-deep in kudu jerky and putrid sharks (well, not literally).
Here are a few of our favorite submissions:
Washington, D.C.: I tried wichity grubs (spelling?) when I was in Australia. We were visiting an Aboriginal community in the outback and were learning about their traditional way of life. I was kind of wussy though and only ate one that was sauteed. The hard-core people tried them fresh out of the ground. The cooked ones were kind of chewy, but really didn't taste like much.
Delaware: The weirdest thing I have ever eaten. I just got back from an Ireland tour. Blood Pudding. Tasted great. I remember my grandfather making it when I was a kid. I never knew what it was and I didn't care. I finally found out what it was. Still tasted like sausage to me.
Food: While in China about 10 years ago, our hosts brought out a range of foods for us to try, courtesy of our professor who wanted us to have an "authentic" trip. One of the cooked birds was brought out with the head still attached. It was a pigeon!
I tried it, since it would be rude not to, and let me tell you, pigeon is about as good as you think it would be. Which means, it is not good. Even worse, one of my classmates started eating the pigeon neck attached to the head (which still had the eyes and beak). The hosts told him repeatedly that they don't eat that part, but my classmate, who was Taiwanese, was adamant that they do. So he ate up to the beak and eyes with his chopsticks!
Weird Food: Ten years ago this summer I was in Zimbabwe with my parents on a hunting safari. We ate elephant stew from an animal that just a few hours before I was standing on top of help to "deconstruct" so that we could get in the trucks.
P.S. you haven't lived until you have eaten kudu jerky.
Chantilly, Va.: Probably fairly tame compared to some answers, but the weirdest thing I ate in the UK was a bacon-flavored crisp (potato chip). Walker's, the British equivalent of Lay's, has a bunch of different crisp flavors. Sadly, the bacon ones smelled like Snausages (the dog treats) and tasted like dust -- definitely not like bacon!
Re strangest food on vacation: Putrid shark (that's the actual name, not only a description) and puffin in Iceland. The shark is the only reason to drink Brennevin, the national spirit made from caraway seeds, and which is only eclipsed in putridity by the shark but is a welcome palate cleanser in the moment. The puffin, served cold, looked like an escargot out of its shell and had a fishy taste and rubbery feel. I'll try anything once. Once.
Weirdest foods: Fruit!: My husband and I went to Vietnam on our honeymoon, and the strangest things we ate were, believe it or not, fruits! We took a sample of every fruit we could find in the market, bought a really cheap pocket knife to cut them open, and then sat in a park and spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to eat them. Mangosteens, dragon fruit, rambutan, lychee, it was a feast!
Alexandria: Just thinking about the weirdest food I ever ate makes me feel a bit queasy all over again. Flash backwards 13 months ago... I was living in India and was about 6 months pregnant. One of my usually silent coworkers came by and offered me a bit of his lunch and promised that in his group (Muslims from a small village in the North) all the pregnant women eat this food. Not wanting to offend him, I tentatively took a small piece and with him smiling widely and goading me on I put it in my mouth. It was dry and rubbery and tasted like a bad combo of burned rubber and stinky dog poo. I had to ask him what it was and with a giant laugh he told me it was dried camel meat. I smiled back, said thank you, and excused myself to the loo where I promptly puked for the next 20 minutes. The whole office still laughs about it though I am long gone.
Arlington: I've eaten a number of unusual animals, including kudu and springbok, squid that included the beaky mouth, and the ostrich that I petted earlier in the day. One of the most memorable though, was not really an unusual food. I was served some sort of whole fish. I've never been a fan of looking my food in the eye, but in this case I was really freaked out because the eye was bulging and milky white. It disturbed me so much that a classmate removed the head from my fish (using his hand--no utensils provided). I later found the other eye in my french fries.
Germantown, Md., working in D.C.: The weirdest thing I've ever eaten was kangaroo meat. I was in the Australian Outback and our group was camping at a facility where you had to cook your own dinner on these sprawling grills. I vividly remember how we all huddled as close as we could with our skewered meat to the grill, not because we were hungry but because it was Winter and it was a rainy mess in a normally arid area. (BTW: my kangaroo was too tough as I cooked it too long; they recommended fixing it as rare as you could.)
Columbia, Md.: Weirdest food I ever ate while on vacation: a dog biscuit dipped in salsa. Not quite a local specialty or anything, but weird nonetheless. My husband went back for seconds!
D.C.: My most unusual food while on vacation was reindeer sausage in Alaska, but I also once had rattlesnake at a relative's place.
Oakton, Va.: How about freshly cut off octopus legs? I had them in Korea. Funny thing is, the suction cups still worked - it reminded me of eating the old Pop Rocks.
washingtonpost.com: This video of people eating live octopus should only be watched where people don't mind hearing you shriek.
Washington, D.C.: The weirdest thing I ever ate wasn't on a trip. It was when I was in law school at Duke. There was a pizza place about a quarter-mile from my apartment that specialized in "unusual" toppings, and one of those was rattlesnake. I used to get the rattlesnake pizza all the time and I loved it. Tasted like a very spicy sausage and had a better texture than the normal sausage most pizza places use.
My father once sent me a New York Times article about a restaurant in China that specializes in... how do I put this delicately... male animal genitalia. I don't think you could pay me enough to eat there.
Juneau, Alaska: Weirdest food: Just a few things from my globetrotting through 50 or 60 countries during the past several years: Massive whale steaks from the grocer's freezer in Longyearbyen, Norway; canned horse in Bishkek, Kygyrstan; kebobs of whole frogs from street stalls in Thailand; snail pizza in Iceland; seal ribs in at a small-village hostel in Greenland; hot dog/potato/mayo pizza in Japan; zebra in Namibia. I should mention I have yet to get sick, probably more through luck than anything.
not your everyday foods....: I've enjoyed roast wild boar in Amiens, France (marinated for three days in the fridge in red wine and onions) and roast bear in Tbilisi, Georgia. The bear was actually gamey and a bit tough, but lots of flavor.
In Paris, I've had limaces, little snails so small that you have to pick them out of their shells with straight pins. But dip them in garlic flavored melted butter and they're terrific!
In Cambrai, France, the regional specialty is the andouillette, a spicy tripe sausage. My friends wrap it in puff pastry to make the what I call "Andouillette Wellington." Yes, it's still tripe sausage but it sounds so much better that way!
For me, this last comment puts all the previous ones in perspective:
Nashville, TN: My weirdest foods weren't really weird to the locals, just new to me and unobtainable at home. They're also some of my best travel memories: "squatties", a bowl of 15-20 teenie lobsters, served on the Isle of Skye; yak kebabs in Tibet (from a yak that died in an accident, not a slaughtered one); fried-sardine sandwiches served on a dormant volcano just off Santorini; and cabrito (young goat) in Reynosa across the border from McAllen, TX. These sound exotic but weren't so to the people dishing it up.
So that's what came from the chat. Who's got wacky food stories to share here?
By Christina Talcott |
June 3, 2008; 7:00 AM ET
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Christina Talcott
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Dining
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Posted by: Amy | June 3, 2008 10:29 AM
Fermented, salted camel milk. Yes, it's as vile as it sounds! It's considered a restorative in parts of the Middle East. A colleague with tribal connections brought some to work one day and offered me a glass - I couldn't drink it. I tried valiantly, and casually excused myself to return the glass to the kitchen... via the bathroom, where it got poured down the sink.
I've also had grilled camel meat (fresh, not dried). Yuck. It's tough, stringy and gamey - it's considered a cheap substitute for mutton.
All of this said, it really is all about where you're from. There are red-blooded Americans who consider a slice of Cheddar to be the appropriate topping for a wedge of apple pie. So much for whipped cream...
Posted by: BxNY | June 3, 2008 11:17 AM
Just remember, pickled Chow Chow at an Amish banquet is one thing, pickled Chow Chow at an Asian banquet is totally different!
Posted by: Dan | June 3, 2008 12:25 PM
Where to start? While in Tibet last year, my husband and I (well, mostly my husband) had plenty of yak meat, yak milk (slightly fermented), and yak butter tea (the butter was fermented). We took the train from Tibet through China, and shared a compartment with two Chinese men - at one stop at a station, they bought us vaccuum-packed, mass-manufactured packets of cured donkey meat and dog meat. Both meats were pretty decent (similar to corned beef or pastrami in taste/texture), but we could only manage to eat enough of the dog meat to be polite.
While in Kenya on our honeymoon 2 years ago, we spent an afternoon visiting a Masai village, and they offered us a drink of some home-fermented brew. It was water-based (not blood or milk-based), and that meant that there were probably some extreme germs originally in the water. We just hoped that the germs had been fermented away and took a few small sips - thankfully, no stomach problems resulted!!
Posted by: adub | June 3, 2008 1:39 PM
While on business in Tokyo, we were served lots of 'different' things--but the weirdest, IMO, was warm sake with blowfish fins in it. :( As a woman, luckily, I didn't end up having to choke down a whole tumbler, but the men I was with graciously offered me about a shot-glass full. It was basically fishy-tasting sake. :( But apparently a delicacy and a 'special occasion' type thing.
They also learned I liked desserts, and I had green tea ice cream with sweet bean paste on top, which was absolutely delicious, despite my initial reluctance.... :) Not so weird, but unusual to us as Americans.
Posted by: Marseille | June 4, 2008 1:04 PM
Three years ago, on a trip to Peru, I was persuaded to partake of the local delicacy in Cuzco -- guinea pig. It was cooked and served whole, with everything except the fur. It almost tasted like chicken...
If you visit the 1500's era cathedral in Cuzco, make sure to see the large painting of Christ at the last supper -- with a cooked guinea pig on the table!
Posted by: charlie bartsch | June 4, 2008 1:16 PM
Hey, Washington DC, you don't need to go to China for 'how do I put it delicately?
male genitalia?' Just about anywhere you go in cattle country you might be invited to a bull fry feed. Some people call them Rocky Mountain Oysters. This is after the bull calves are altered, in the spring, so then they are steer calves.
I won't try them but people who do say they taste like fried liver. I don't eat liver either. But I do like a slice of sharp cheddar on my apple pie.
Right now, some restaurants have bull fries on their menus for specials.
Posted by: Virginia Smith | June 11, 2008 4:45 PM
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It's not too wacky, but we had some great charque in Bolivia. It's dried llama meat that's rehydrated and shredded and fried (I think). It's served with hard boiled eggs and boiled potatoes. Great stuff! My kids also had llama steak at lunch one day near the ancient pre-Inca site of Tihuanacu. They loved it.