Go Back  Fodor's Travel Talk Forums > Destinations > Europe
Reload this Page >

What's the most adventurous food you've tried, and how did you like it?

What's the most adventurous food you've tried, and how did you like it?

Old Apr 1st, 2002, 11:17 AM
  #81  
Travis
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
I think, at least from what I can remember, the most interesting thing I ever ate, was the last time in Paris. I had boiled deer blood, it was an appitizer, very interesting. Not as bad as I thought it would be, kind of soft with kind of a dry wood taste, if that makes any sense.
 
Old Apr 1st, 2002, 12:06 PM
  #82  
food
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
We had iguana in Costa Rica. Tastes like chicken, except they left the tiny little bones in it!
 
Old Apr 1st, 2002, 12:12 PM
  #83  
Chris
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
I tried rabo de toro (bull's tail) in Spain and enjoyed it despite its appearance. As you'd expect, there's not much meat on it, and it is served in slices/sections. It looks like a rounded star made of cartilage with pockets of meat inbetween the points and it is stewed to make it more tender.

While in Spain, I also tried a tapa called "sangre con tomate" which I understood to literally mean "blood with tomato", however, I thought/expected it'd be a tomato salad in a red wine sauce or something. In fact, it was gelatinous slices of blood sausage-black, blood jello really. I tried a couple of slices and couldn't stand the texture or the thought of what it was. Just thinking about it is making my mouth water in a bad way.

There's a Mexican dish called "barbacoa" which is the meat of the cow's head which actually tastes pretty good if you don't thin of what it is. Cow tongue, however, is another story...
 
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 07:01 AM
  #84  
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 516
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Gosh, I just love these food stories!
Mariarosa is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 07:32 AM
  #85  
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 937
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
In Alaska I ate Seal grease on potatoes. It was pretty good actually.
JandaO is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 07:42 AM
  #86  
cmt
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 6,793
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Raw pork sausage. I met an internet pal of mine in Milan a year and a half ago. He took me to dinner. The restaurant owner knew him well, so he kept consulting with him about the items that were fresh that day and he showed us the fish that was going to be dinner. When he brought this raw sausage, I thought it was a continuation of this practice of showing us the food before it was cooked. I was wondering why he just left it on the table and didn't discuss it with my friend and then take it back to the kitchen. But that was it. Raw. Meant to be eaten that way. My host ate it, and I felt it would be rude for me to decline, so I did, too. I would be flying home in two days, so I figured tht I'd ask my doctor for the human medicne eqivalent of my dogs' monthly heartworm pills, which kill heartworm larvae before they have a chance to mature. But there are no such pills for us humans for trichina worm larvae. However, my doctor said that the pork is much safer in Italy than in the uS, becasue the pigs are fed with much better food, and no animal scraps. Here I am, a year and a half later, perfectly healthy, with no sign of trichinosis.

The raw pork was OK, too bland, with a peculiar slippery, though chopped texture. I much prefer cooked.
cmt is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 07:50 AM
  #87  
PCHsmiles
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Toasted Hollywood Diet with Durkee's sauce. The challenge was wine pairing.
 
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 07:53 AM
  #88  
ira
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 74,699
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Gee,

My favorites are tongue and corned beef on rye with coleslaw, and sea urchin roe shushi.
ira is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 08:34 AM
  #89  
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 283
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts

I've not eaten many foods that I think of as "exotic."

Kimchee - I love it, especially with bulgogi

raw oysters - I love, especially in a shot glass with ketel one vodka and a touch of cocktail sauce

escargot - yummy when prepared with butter and garlic

mussles/muscles - both kinds are yummy, the kind in the shell are especially nice when prepared in a coconut broth

sushi - very nice, except I don't eat rice so I stick with:

sashimi - raw sliced fish, wonderful with a bit of pickled ginger

calamari - lightly battered and fried squid

elk - very nice meat, not gamey

venison - horrible, it smells bad and tastes worse

chitlins - pig intestins, the worst smelling garbage in the world

pigs feet - not bad, but not much meat

buffalo - had it in hamburger form, it didn't like the texture

horse - believe or not my own mother tried to pass this off to me as beef when I was a kid. I took one bite and then was sent to my bedroom for being a brat. How could she expect me to eat a horse?
MizzEve is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 08:49 AM
  #90  
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 440
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Mopani Worms in Johannesburg. They're not really worms, but the larval stage of the emperor moth. The sauce was great.
jenviolin is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 09:26 AM
  #91  
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 2,325
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Fried chicken blood in Peru. Not bad.
Snoot (deep fried pig snout covered in bar-b-que sauce served on a bun at Frank's Diner in Bellevue, Illinois. Pretty good actually.
Grinisa is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 09:35 AM
  #92  
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 442
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Great thread!

Most adventurous:
Fried scorpions (poisonous) - north China

Blowfish (poisonous) - Japan

Which make rattlesnake - US and plain old snake - Taiwan, seem pretty tame.

Like some posters here, I will try almost anything once.

Worst case of food poisoning: India
Second worst case: breakfast omelette on a U.S. carrier.

Love that bit about the "jellied moose nose" - haven't tried that yet!
jason888 is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 09:36 AM
  #93  
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 1,300
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Raw herring in Amsterdam.... yuck!
martytravels is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 09:47 AM
  #94  
cmt
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 6,793
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
I guess I've eaten many foods that some people find odd, but I never thought they were especially strange, because I had most of them when I was a small child: tripe (I HATE it), beef tongue (OK, but too salty), calves' brains (bland and creamy), lamb kidney (tried as an adult, in France), pork liver (the best kind of liver, in my opinion), blood sausage (tried as an adult, in France), various raw molluscs, spleen sandwich (I think it was spleen), and many kinds of garden weeds. (I won't mention rabbit, because there's nothing strange about that, and it's strange to think it's strange.)

The only thing I thought was really strange was the raw pork sausage, which I described above.

The most disguesting strange thing I've had to eat was raw egg (although I could never keep it down). I was forced to eat eggs for breakfast as a child. If I wouldn't eat them in some normal way, raw eggs were hidden in my milk, my fruit juice, etc., and I'd accidentally swallow them when I got to the bottom of the glass. Now THAT's truly disgusting. To this day, I find the texture of raw eggs repulsive, and I will never eat an egg for breakfast, and never eat more a single egg at a time, and even then, only when throughly disguised, as in a frittata, and not often.
cmt is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 10:14 AM
  #95  
 
Join Date: May 2003
Posts: 6,320
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Martytravels; you cannot be referring to the famous maatjes herring in Amsterdam? Delicious with chopped onions, and a very popular food in Holland. The weirdest thing I ever had was deep fried baby octopus (whole ones) in Singapore; very crunchy, and tasted like crisp bacon.
Tulips is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 10:53 AM
  #96  
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 109
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
I'm Korean by background but grew up in the US. I remember when I was a kid, I would be too embarassed to mention the stuff I ate to other kids b/c I thought they would think it was too gross. Of course, now many of these foods (like calimari, octopus, kimchi, sushi, sashimi, etc) are all considered "trendy" and totally acceptable. And some of the others listed in here don't seem all that strange to me- love steak tartare, oysters, escargot, tripe, various game, etc. I am getting hungry just writing down this list!

Other than the things listed above, my most adventurous foods are:

Sea cucumbers- Love it and don't mind the texture.

Uni (sea urchin)- love it too. Tastes like the sea

Korean blood sausages- I absolutely love it. It's sausage stuffed with rice and cooked glass noodles with some pigs blood.

Sauteed grasshoppers- ok- just crunchy
JaneS is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 01:15 PM
  #97  
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 682
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Many years ago at a wedding rehearsal dinner San Francisco's Chinatown I tried some foods that were on the exotic side:

Sharks fin soup - delicious, tasted a lot like chicken soup

Sea cucumber - some kind of jellyfish, didn't care for the texture

Roasted squab - too little meat for all that effort.

But I did love the authentic Peking duck and the red bean soup which was part of the dessert course.

In Scandinavia I've tasted some foods that may be considered somewhat unusual, at least in the USA. After enjoying a stack of small flapjacks that were almost black in color, I was told that the liquid used in the batter was cow's blood. Interestingly, there was no blood taste at all. They were very tasty with lingonberry sauce! Smoked eel is good too.

I have also tasted reindeer and horse meat, which were both salty but good. In Sweden "sour" or fermented herring is a delicacy but I can't get past the awful stench and have never ventured past my first whiff of the stuff. Yecchh!

I know I'm not the most adventurous when it comes to food as I refuse to eat most organ meats and any and all insects.
Rebecka is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 01:22 PM
  #98  
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 1,300
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Tulips, that's indeed the herring I'm referring to.
I love Amsterdam and wanted to go native, so I tried it just like you described it, but nearly gagged. I consider myself fairly urbane with an adventurous, sophisticated palate but I just couldn't get with the herring. Maybe I should try again.
martytravels is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 01:31 PM
  #99  
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 1,815
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
In the overall scheme of things, these aren't that adventurous but I tried tripe once (a former girlfriend's father loved it and keep challenging me to try it, almost rubbing his hands with glee when he saw the look of disgust on my face), and had baby octopi on pasta at Senor Sorriso's restaurant in Vernazza (I was there with the former girlfriend who had the tripe-loving father and she wouldn't even try one.)

I had a dish of snails and rabbit in spicy tomato-based sauce in a great little restaurant in Barcelona and thought it was delicious.

On my return trip to Vernazza, I had the chance to try eating a fish eye, but didn't. Next time, I will.
capo is offline  
Old Aug 21st, 2003, 01:42 PM
  #100  
Amy
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 6,822
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Fermented shark in Iceland was probably the oddest thing I've tasted so far. (I mean, I grew up eating scrapple, so what do I know?)
Let's just say 'tis no wonder the Vikings were hardy!
Amy is offline  
Related Topics
Thread
Original Poster
Forum
Replies
Last Post
sluggo
United States
33
Jun 22nd, 2012 07:13 AM
NativeNewYorker
United States
13
Apr 19th, 2011 07:27 AM
dancer0707
United States
2
Jun 20th, 2005 12:12 PM
DixieChick
United States
13
Jun 26th, 2004 08:59 AM
pdavis
United States
8
Feb 16th, 2003 11:01 AM

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are On


Thread Tools
Search this Thread

Contact Us - Manage Preferences - Archive - Advertising - Cookie Policy - Privacy Statement - Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information -