What's the most exotic thing you ate?
I've had Kangaroo meat, gator meat, shark's fin soup, Bird's nest soup, durian, ostrich, whale, pigeon, frogs, silk worms, live octopus,
and one of the most disgusting stuff was vegemite from Australia...actually durian is pretty bad too.
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re: EWSflash
klyeoh
May 10, 2011 09:22 PM
I'd had silkworms in Korea (called beondegi ) - I thought it was the second most foul-tasting thing I'd ever had in my life.
The worst for me was the yellow slimy stuff that comes out of a cockroach's behind when you squeeze one to death. We'd get enough slime from 15-20 dead cockroaches, boil with Chinese medicinal herbs & then drunk. Supposed to be good for you, if it doesn't kill you first. Well, I survived :-D
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re: Monica
Passadumkeg
May 31, 2011 04:07 PM
Check Consumer Reports. You eat cockroach bits, feces and rat hairs and feces whenever you eat breakfast (and other?) sausage.
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re: arktos
I had sea turtle. I would never catch one myself, but some Fijians were my hosts. It was very good.
I caught a giant Tridacna clam, and they loved it and prepared a sort of ceviche. It was good.Once I spearfished a Cal scorpionfish, and carrying it up to the beach in my catch-bag, its pelvic spine gave me a sting in my calf, well that was retaliation. F**k, It really went throughout my body. But I got over it, and took it to the Weber and grilled it. I never went after one again, though.
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J.L.
Apr 9, 2011 03:11 AM
Haggis (minced sheep organs, AKA pluck, boiled in its own stomach) in Scotland.
Surströmming (canned fermented, AKA rotting, Baltic herring), in Sweden. That reeked to high heaven.
Amazon tree ants, right off the tree (but not just any tree ant: You pick the one with the very large abdomen, containing the sweet nectar which is meant to serve as a "lunch truck" for worker ants), in Brazil.
Witchetty grub (moth larva), from a decomposing tree trunk, in the Australian outback. Tasted like almond. (Yes, I also had kangaroo, emu, crocodile while visiting Down Under).
Cuy (Peruvian guinea pig roasted on a spit), in the Andes. Tasted like rat.
A shot of raw turtle blood, chased with vodka, at Morimoto, NYC.
Konowata (fermented sea cucumber innards), served sushi style, at Sushi Gen, L.A.
Basashi (raw horse meat), in Japan.
Chilled frog sperm sacs, as a dessert soup, at Elite, L.A.
And that's pretty much it. Oh, and the mystery meat served at the cafeteria of most American hospitals.
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Passadumkeg
Oct 9, 2010 02:05 PM
Holding the scrotum of a calf, cutting out the testes, during round up, and fryin' 'em up, here in New Mexico. Almost, but not quite, enough to turn me into a vegetarian.
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CapreseStacy
Oct 9, 2010 01:34 PM
Perhaps not very exotic, but gets a laugh amongst friends when I tell the "hazing" story about my first cattle round-up on my husband's family's ranch. The calves' testes (some call them "Rocky Mountain Oysters") were saved in a pot and fried up for the newbie to enjoy. I passed the test and everyone else had a few bites, too, because they really aren't too bad with a little garlic and salt/pepper. Have had fresh frog legs, all edible parts of a duck, venison and other foraged/hunted items (dandelion greens, sage, wild rose hips, nettles) on the ranch since then at our "from these acres" dinners up there.
I also had squid ink sauce over pasta in Spain. Was exotic to me at the time, and somewhat hard to get used to the complete blackness of the sauce while wondering what it might be doing to my teeth.
Made my own chocolate covered ants as a kid at summer camp, and ate fish bait (those flourescent salmon eggs) on a bet once.
Tried uni once and thought it was awful. Love all sushi, but that was gross. I'll give it another shot at some point because I know several people who rave about it.
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Endangered sea turtle.
It was legal for the local indigenous population on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua to catch and eat, I was there at dinnertime, and it was "what's for dinner."
DANBOB›2 Replies-
re: danbob
The most exotic thing I ever ate, I believe, was tiger meat. Now this was about forty years ago when we didn't know about them being endangered. We had an exotic dinner club wiht a group of friends and this is what one couple served. I can't recall how they got it. It was strong and gamey.
I don't do insects but if you are interested there is an Asian restaurant near LAX that has a whole side of the menu with insect dishes. I wish I could rememmber the name. Anyone?
I had my first snails at a French restaurant in NYC when I was fourteen. Basically my bro made me try one and they were delish--or rather the garlic butter was delish.
I have yet to try tripe. The urine smell and all. Is it worth it?
Love uni sushi!
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re: Quill
Delucacheesemonger
Oct 10, 2010 02:41 AM
Urine smell is from rognon, or kidneys. Tripe aroma is it's own, l love it. When in Japan had horse and whale sushi. At one sushi ocassion had sperm sacs from four different sea creatures, not quite yum, felt like Linda Lovelace.
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What is the most Exotic thing you have ever put in your mouth?
One of the most exotic things I have come across to put in your mouth is called a Delicious Monster. It’s a tropical fruit. If you eat it when it’s not ripe you get a mouth full of acid. If you eat it when it when it’s ripe it is said to smell heavenly and taste like fruit salad. It’s also called a Swiss Cheese plant.
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Bill Hunt
Nov 17, 2008 06:50 PM
Chocolate-covered baby bees, and chocolate-covered ants. Seems to be a theme there.
Now, we had some really nice durian on the North Shore of O`ahu, as a "special" treat. Do not know where these came from, and they were not something that I'd do every day, but considering the talk, they were not bad. The suite also did not smell of them, but we had the lanai doors open and ate them on the lanai. I hear that some airlines have banned them for in-flight snacks. In a closed space, I can see that.
Hunt
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How about a 1924 Taylor Vintage Port? That seems passably exotic; it certainly was delicious! More to the point, I’ve relished fresh ripe durian fruit. However, like a good cigar, it seems that durian is much more enjoyable if you’re the one who’s actually doing the consuming and not the one sitting nearby, or, say, in a room upstairs.
I’ve had snail eggs – “escargot caviar” – from France. Quite tasty with a drop or two of Pernod. Just returned from Hong Kong, where I tried cold chicken feet at a Thai restaurant. Probably not destined to be my new comfort food. We did enjoy an extraordinary soup/broth at a Cantonese restaurant made with various pig parts, including the lungs, as well as the obligatory chicken feet.
I have tasted numerous rare and exotic coffees and teas over the years, including various aged Indonesian coffees and Chinese teas. Have also roasted, brewed and served the infamous “Kopi Luwak” on several occasions. This is coffee made from beans that have passed through the entire digestive system of the common palm civet – a member of the mongoose family. The Luwak coffee that I obtained years ago had a fascinatingly complex taste, but cupping reports of recent samples seem to frequently complain of poor flavor quality. I have also savored a few cups of “Jacu” coffee from the Camocim Farm in Espirito Santo, Brazil. These “avian selected” beans have passed through the alimentary canal of the beautiful Jacu (a.k.a. Guan) bird, native to the region. Rich and mild; I’ll eschew the temptation to make poop jokes about it. It does give new meaning to the concept of “bird-friendly coffee,” though.
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Does it count if you were drunk? Fertilized duck egg... can't remember what it tasted like, but the curled up little fetus (embryo?) has stayed in my mind's eye.
Also have periodically, starting ever since I was a little kid with a pet dog, nibbled on dog food... back then, kinda to 'be one' with my pet... nowadays, to check out what it actually tastes like since I'm feeding it to my dogs... which could, if you believe the hype, make any of us dog-food tasters also eaters of euthanized pets (haven't tasted any since I heard about that purported practice).›1 Reply -
Passadumkeg
Jan 14, 2008 03:29 PM
I just stumbled on this, so in chronological order where I have lived over the last 40 + years: NJ, head cheese & kishka; Pa., hot bacon dressing & scrapple; Viet Nam, c-rats & still warm VC pho; USSR, caviar & deep fried sturgeon, homemade vodka, kvass; New Mex., calves testes, fresh elk liver & heart, a jalapeno eating contest; Norway, whale steaks, fried cod tongues & cheeks, cod roe, lutefisk; Finland, self -picked poisonous false morels(delicious!), baby reindeer chops & reindeer liver soup, burbot roe; Maine, pickled periwinkles, irish moss seaweed, neon red hot dogs; Bolivia, freshly caught (by me) fried piranha, grilled monkey, armadillo and cow's udder, chicha; Korea, live baby octopus, a dog feast ; and now back in Maine, fresh picked wild mushrooms in summer and home made garden borscht for supper tonight. Life has been good to me. Peace.
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re: Passadumkeg
Caroline1
Jan 19, 2008 12:10 PM
Okay, if you can come late, Passadumkeg, then I can arrive later! :-)
As a kid, I had all sorts of exotic birds. Family friends had an exotic bird farm. San Diego Zoo sent their sick birds to Margaret and Kris to nurse back to health. At their house I had peacock (eh), several types of pheasant (pretty good), emu, and some small parrots I didn't much care for.
Then there was the time Alton B (as in Brimmage, not Brown) and I went hunting with our Red Ryder BB guns (I was a tom boy, so sue me. I think we were around 9) and bagged ourselves a mud hen from a pond that resulted from recent rains. Took it home and insisted my mom roast it for our dinner. Oh god, it was awful! You could taste every grub, grass and worm the critter had ever eaten! Not to mention the mud! But it was a fun childhood Peter and the Wolf type adventure!
There aren't many critters from the southern California waters I haven't cooked and eaten. Sea snails. Sea cucumbers. I have a guilt complex and feel personally repsonsible over how few abalone are left. Keyhole limpets. Barnacles. Clams, mussels, oysters, scallops, spiny lobster. Kelp! Love good kelp. Fresh sea urchin just brought up from the bottom of the sea, cracked open, rinsed in sea water and eaten with a spoon is a transcending experience! Depending on which sea plants they've been munching, some actually taste like fresh flowers! I've read recipes and menus with fried or cooked sea urchin and it curls my toes. May Neptune forgive them their sins!
Then there was the time when I was a kid and came home from school to find the house smelling really really bad. My grandmother and her friend from across the street were in the kitchen making head cheese from scratch from a HUGE boar's head. The neighbor's son wouldn't let her make it in their house, so they made it in ours and the aroma climbed the stairs and took up residence in MY bedroom! But when it was chilled and gelled and had a nice amount of good vinegar in it, it was surprisingly good! Everey once in a while I have to get some head cheese at the butchers, but it's never as good.
Once raised my own escargot when I lived in Del Mar. The California Department of Agriculture publishes a nice brochure on how to cleanse and cook the little devils. The snails of southern California migrated from France when a grape blight hit in the early 20th century and the snaiuls stowed away on the French vine grafts that came by sea, so they're bona fide French helix critters. Fresh snails are soooooo much better than canned! Then one day I figured up how much they were costing me per pound based on all of the exotic plants and flowers they were feasting on and went to the garden shop and bought some snail killer. <sigh> But not before stocking the freezer.
I like really good sushi, but I'm getting burned out on the fusion crap you find in sushi bars these days. Make it at home or do without.
No idea what kind of weird stuff I was forced to ingest as a child in China Town, SF. My paternal step grandmother would drag me with her to her herbalist every summer when I was placed atop a barrel while they went into the pharmacy in back to mix her herbs. The barrels around me were always open and contained things like dried toads and shark fins and all sorts of scary looking things. Then the old Chinese herbalist would bring me a cup of tea he brewed specially for me. A really sweet man, but really really grim tasting stuff. But I would stick it out because when we were through there, Grandma Lena would take me for dim sum for lunch! YAY! And then to a souvenir shop to get a small pice of carved ivory. So yucky Chinese grim tea earns one an ivory bridge full of elephants, or a back scratcher, or a fan. If you can get the tea down and keep it down.
Then there were some rare pregnant crabs from the Sea of Corinth. Don't know what they're called in English, but my landlady in Greece brought me a large pan of them boiled, then showed me how to fold back the under-shell and eat the orange roe. Incredible!
Probably other things that don't pop to mind at the moment. But I don't do bugs. At least not that I'm aware of.
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Chew on That
Sep 20, 2007 04:08 PM
Until I read this post I thought I had eaten some exotic things, but now I'm embarassed to even say what I thought was exotic. I'll just throw eel out there so you have an idea.
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re: cornFusion
I went to South East Asia for 7 months and ate some weird stuff ( bugs, gross cuts of meat, and some things i didn't want to know) but we have some crazy stuff right here in Hawaii. to think most people like Spam its even on some fine dinning places here. You should always try something no matter what it is or looks like it can be good. my fav is dinegawan ( blood pork) it's a great dish cooked right. just my two cents. I think now with Anthony and Andrew weird stuff has become main stream.
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re: chefaron
blood is something that appears with some regularity in the cuisines of most cultures (notably black pudding in england for europhiles; polish duck blood soup; german blutwurst, etc.) east and west. So i never considered as exotic. Guessthere is some truth to the saying that "one person's fish is anothers poisson"!
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Crow in spicy sauce;
Deep fried cow cud;
Frog gland soup (slightly sweet);
Dogmeat sate;
Red-simmered bear meat...›2 Replies-
re: cornFusion
CapreseStacy
Oct 9, 2010 01:12 PM
wow... deef fried cow cud. I like to think of myself as a brave eater (I'll try anything once, just to see) but this one would give me pause. Then again, anything that's deep fried is probably somewhat tasty.
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LordOfTheGrill
Sep 14, 2007 10:00 AM
Not a world-traveler by any stretch, but I've had sushi, seaweed, buffalo, ostrich, 'gator, frogs legs, rattlesnake, calf's brain, cow tongue, a variety of other organ meats, snails, a variety of shellfish, durian, squid, octopus, huitlacoche (corn smut), and thiet canh vit (sp? Vietnamese duck's blood pizza). Gotta draw the line at bugs and balut, though (shudder).
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re: LordOfTheGrill
huitlacohe - corn fungus - I've tried often and never liked. Sea Urchin - meat from the spines is pretty good, baby eels are great and served from menus in Spain. Blood sausage isn't as rare or exotic as it sounds, and depending on where you eat it, it's pretty good in some forms. I've had a lot of foods in a lot of places and don't even think about how "exotic" it is. I do stop at bugs, larvae and wormy things - just can't go there without the gag reflex working overtime. I'm not so sure about haggis or balut either. other than that, I try a lot, but don't necessarily like it.
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PikaPikaChick
Sep 13, 2007 11:43 AM
When I was little the other kids used to think I was weird because I ate dried squid and seaweed.
I'm fairly adventurous nowadays but my list is short and still pretty tame: tripe (interesting texture, not bad) and uni sushi (YUCK - like licking the bottom of a garbage can)
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Candy
Sep 12, 2007 02:27 PM
You know, you need a qualifier for that question, like when? What age. At 12 having my first raw oyster and escargot in the same meal was pretty exotic. I had been to oysrer roasts before that and for a child in the 4th grade an oyster roast was pretty exotic then too. Having lived in Japan in kindergarten up to half way through 2nd grade with a Japanese cook in our home I can't begin to tell you what I ate. Though funnily enough some of our food was really exotic to the household help. My mother was pregnant with one of my brothers and came into the kitchen to find our house-boy eating a breakfast of potato chips with milk and sugar. It sent her running to the closest bathroom.
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deep-fried scorpions, sea slugs (aka sea cucumbers), deep-fried cicadas. Funny how most westerners tend to get grossed out by these (for the record - I HATE sea slugs) but have no problems with raw oysters.
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re: kobetobiko
blech! believe me - i've eaten my share. there was always someone at a chinese banquet (during my 2 years in china) who just had to plop one of those little buggers on my plate. the texture is about as appealing as chewing on a rubber eraser. there are plenty of other excellent sauce conduits out there I'd much rather have.
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Sam Fujisaka
Sep 11, 2007 07:00 PM
Packaged breakfast cereal, Starbucks fancy coffee based whatever, US cereal based hotdogs, Wonder Bread, a Taco Bell taco...
And I've enjoyed deep fried sparrow and rice-field rats in Burma, steamed 18-day duck egg embryo in the Philippines, deep fried adult beetles (from white grubs), fried ants here in Colombia, fried grubs.
The other day in Jatlenango, Chiapas, we had a party in which the main was a steer's head, skinned, and slowly roasted in a domed clay oven. All parts--lips, brain, snout, tongue, meaty parts, eyeballs and eyeball sockets, and more were consumed with gusto!
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tatertotsrock
Sep 11, 2007 04:24 PM
Just had DURIAN...my friend just brought some chocholate-covered durian for me after his crazy trip to Borneo, Malaysia, and some other places...I loved it.
Squid Liver was the oddest thing I've eaten..so bizaree texturely (is that a word?)
Major concentrated flavor of organ meat-metalic bloody tastes...hhmm. Have ordered it twice jsut to see my friends reactions..soem have liked it, some wouldn't get near it.
I'll try anything once.›1 Reply -
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Jill Brazil
Sep 11, 2007 11:49 AM
Piranha Soup in the Amazon Rainforest!!
I found a blogger with the preparation instructions here:
http://travelvice.com/archive/2007/03... -
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I second the assessment of vegemite - and to think they eat it for breakfast!!
You're very lucky to have tried all those things. I have eaten a deep fried cricket. Once. Never again, Never ever again.
Hey, Kobe..., bet you eat those at the movies, right?
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re: maisonbistro
JungMann
Sep 11, 2007 11:52 AM
Fried crickets are probably the most exotic I've gone. I gagged and spit them onto the table because the texture was so off-putting.
I've also had duck fetus eggs, chicken feet, fish eyes, lamb brains, but from a cultural standpoint, those aren't strange to me. When I was growing up we also ate plenty of tongue, tripe and bone marrow which was exotic to Americans in the 80s, but now seems to be served with some frequency in restaurants all over New York.
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re: maisonbistro
southernitalian
Sep 11, 2007 12:10 PM
Remind me what is vegemite and what does it taste like? I had homemade blood pudding (black and white) at my father-in-law's farm in County Cavan, Ireland.
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re: maisonbistro
alexthepink
Sep 12, 2007 03:30 AM
Quite right simplefood, marmite and vegemite are completely different! Marmite is famous (infamous?) for dividing opinion - you either hate it or love it...
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I guess these are exotic to some people, but to me they did not sound that exotic at all...
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re: Monica
the stomach of toads, stomach of snow toads, pig's lung, the tip of pig's esophagus, double-boiled pig's brain, grill tuna eyes, tuna bone marrow sashimi, the soft bone of tuna's mouth and "nose", the spines of eels, braised skin of jumbo grouper (about the size of whale), grouper cheeks, soup made with elephant teeth (not longer legal), chicken testicles, etc. A lot more and I will add as I remember
I am not a big fan or worms and bugs though
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re: FrankJBN
I actually got a kick of all the purported foods kobe's eaten. I mean stomach of toads AND snow toads -God knows there's a difference - as subtle taste nuance. A grouper the size of a whale..... wouldn't that then be a whale??? Don't think grouper come that big - but I could be mistaken, not a grouper scholar.
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re: maisonbistro
Hi masisonbistro,
Just want to clarify that I don't eat this kind of things everyday. I have had them before, but they are not my usual diet ;D
The stomach of toad and snow toad are prepared very differently and for different purposes. The stomach of normal toads are usually stir-fried with garlic sauce or black bean sauce or spicy sauce. You are right that the stomach don't have much flavor, you more or less enjoy the texture.
The stomach of snow toad, however, is very expensive and is usually double boil with rock sugar as dessert (like a sweet soup). It is very common in Asia (China, Thailand, Taiwan, etc.) and is purposed to be very good for your health, skin, and respiratory system.
Lastly, the grouper is about 300 lbs, so it is indeed about the size of a small whale, but a grouper is a grouper, not whale (which I believe is a mammal).
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re: FrankJBN
Hi FrankJBN,
I was a kid (like 5, 6 years old) when I had that. This soup was a old remedy for people who suffered from frequent nose bleeding (which I had when I was small). The teeth were ground into powder form and mixed with broth for consumption. You don't really taste much of the teeth, really, it's like drinking very thin broth. It's for cure sake.
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