Bizarre Foods
 

From an email I received at work this morning comes this bit of TV info:

Traveling to foreign countries sometimes means trying different foods. The Travel Channel's latest series will showcase this on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern premiering February 26 at 9p. Andrew's itinerary will take him to Morocco, Spain, Scotland, China, Tibet and more to experience various cultures through their food such as goat's head, tongue salad and pigeon pie (yum!). The series is produced by Tremendous! Entertainment for the Travel Channel.

What will they stoop to next? By pigeon pie I assume they are referring to bistella which is one of the world's great dishes and certainly not "Bizarre" in any way. Tongue is on the menu of every good Kosher-style deli...bizarre? Lamb's tongue salad is one of the most popular dishes at a good Italian restaurant here in NYC. Travel Channel is not batting a thousand these days, what with this and with that awful blonde woman doing those Europe programs.

Come to think of it, maybe they will film an episode in my kitchen. They can film this weird American woman who cooked slices of the liver of a calf last night! And served it with onions and balsamic vinegar. Not that IS bizarre!

NOW that is bizarre.

Whether the foods are truly "bizarre" or not, I cannot comment.

But I do like Andrew Zimmern-- he is a Minneapolis local, and I used to listen to his restaurant radio show on Saturdays. I find him much more likable than Samantha Brown.

Liz

Well, I tried Fried Coke at the State Fair of Texas. Does that count?

Intrigued that Scotland is on the list-apart from puttng salt on porridge instead of sugar, I can't think what the Scots do "foodwise" that could possibly be seen as "bizzarre". I mean we all got over the shock of knowing the ingredients of haggis a long time ago, didn't we... Could it be the deep-fried Mars Bars?

Scotland has haggis, white pudding, square sausage, deep fried mars bars and pizza. Not to mention Irn Bru, dandelion and burdock and purple tin

OK, I was with you right up until the "purple tin"?

purple tin = tenants super. It's what the discerning al fresco imbiber chooses. That or Buckfast.

Aah, "blue plate" special in my parlance...

People who watch that type of show aren't that traveled or sophisticated, probably, so I'm sure haggis would fit the definition of bizarre. I think it's bizarre and I have had it and knew about it before. Well, bizarre is probably not the right word for some of these dishes to me, I just don't like them. The Travel Channel has a lot of junk on it, it's just another production idea, at least it's better than some of their stuff.

Buckfast - made by monks, drunk by alkies

I haven't seen the program, but I've seen a couple of previews, and much of the food they've shown him eating is in fact genuinely bizarre: ant larva, eyes, live beating hearts, deep-fried tarantulas, bats, those disgusting almost-hatched duck eggs ("eggs with legs"), fermented meat, and so forth.

Obviously there's a large element of shock value in this, but it looks like a serious effort at traveling to places that are interesting and unusual and exploring what people eat there. It's in the vein of Anthony Bourdain, who is in the previews. It doesn't look bad.

Of course, to a Bushman in Namibia, bizarre would mean a McDonald's hamburger.

The Travel Channel is making an effort to move at least partly away from endless thinly-disguised infomercials about Fabulous Las Vegas.

ekscrunchy: the liver sounds wonderful to me as that is what I ordered last wk at L'Absinthe.
fnarr999; couldn't agree more re
the Travel Channel constant
pushing LV.

Why should haggis, goat's head, tongue salad and pigeon pie be "bizarre"? These a re perfectly normal, tasty dishes. We eat such things daily.
"Bizarre" means for me lamb roast with mint jelly (yes, I have really seen this on an American cruise ship).

As an ex-New zealander there is nothing less bizzare and more wonderful than Roast lamb with mint jelly or mint sauce. Now marsmallows for breakfast that is bizarre.

We eat lamb with garlic, rosmary and thyme. Doesn't mint kill all the taste?

I've eaten haggis and liked it, but I have to admit the list finarf provided would gross me out. I don't have a lot of room to talk, though, as we grew up eating pig souse, which is made from boiling pigs feet, adding pork, vinegar and spices to the mixture and letting the mass solidify. I really like it but my husband can't even stand to look at it, plus he says vinegar-flavored jello would make him sick.... Each to his own!

Many foods are quite tasty as long as you don't dwell on the ingredients - like scrapple.