Most of the stuff in this thread is fine. I don't like things with a weird/slimey/slippery texture though. So that's all the odd seafood stuff out as well as jellied things. Worst thing I've actually had was squid rings in Barcelona. They still had the suckers on them :\
I was coerced into eating some chitterlings once when I lived in a flat above a butchers' shop. They were quite nice actually, a bit like tongue or processed ham. The only thing to hint at their origins was a slight aftertaste of bile and poo…
There's lots of perfectly palatable food being listed on this thread. How would all the "I can't stand overcooked peas" people feel about eating something where maggots hit you in the face as you tuck in?
Also Branston type Pickle. I want to taste the food, not some revolting vinegar based crap (with lumps in)!
This goes for ketchup too (without the lumps)
Most of the stuff listed on here isn't actually that bad, but I challenge anyone to eat boiled sea urchin and like it. It looks like grey sponge and has a bland taste at first that steadily becomes utterly vile. apparently it's a delicacy..ugh.
Just to add to last night's post – it's a cultural thing too. The folks who fed me some "interesting" food in Singapore came over here and we thought we would repay the culinary favour. As they ate some "weird shit" over there I thought they would be fine with our weird shit! You should have seen them gag when presented with a selection of stilton and a nice ripe camembert!
McDonalds and/or KFC. Mechanically recovered meat/sludge and deep fried battery hen respectively. I hate them both and would happily see every single one of their establishments burned to the ground.
sobriety… I've had sea urchin sashimi before (at breakfast time!). It looks rank-tank 5000 and has an unappealing texture but actually tastes delicious.
[edit] at the time, my gf commented that it "looks like brown cats tongues"
Some ghastly sounding stuff listed above, but i do like Jellied Eels, bit of vinegar all mixed in with that lovely jelly, good old chew and spit the bone out
Used to do my own when you could still buy live eels at the Pie and Mash shop,all wriggling about in metal pans outside the shop.
I think this thread shows how ruined so many people are in our society; there is so much good food mentioned here including some of my favourites – parsnips are lovely.
When I went to China I wanted to eat the strangest things I could find though eventually decided to stop that when I saw a chopped up dog's head.
Just casting my mind back… I have no idea what the hell it was but we had a mystery-meat stew at a food market in Vietnam. It looked lovely but the meat component turned out to be truly ghastly. Whatever the creature was also had a suspiciously tiny little ribcage (smaller than a rabbit's). I don't really like to dwell too much on what it might have been!
Felt obliged to eat the lot as we were sitting right under the watchful gaze of the pho mamma 🙁
At a different place on the same trip, two gents at a table adjacent to ours shared a turtle for lunch (killed and grilled at their table). Part of the ritual was to each have a shotglass full of the turtle's blood as a litle amuse bouche before tucking in.
Now I agree entirely on KFC, I was actually sick when my son convinced me it was eatable one time. Strangely I can quite happily handle a BigMac, albeit on a fairly rare basis.
Having worked in some pretty awful/odd places I have sampled the worst that China, Korea, Japan, Pakistan etc can throw at me. However, the only thing that has made me properly bulk-up was roasted chestnuts at the Manchester Christmas market. Like eating warm rotten wood. Urgh.
OK, I'll accept that dry, boiled stuff that was served up in school with a bit of bacon on top (hands up who only ate the bacon) 😉
But you cannot compare that stuff (for want of a stronger word) to pig, duck, chicken or may personal favourite: Goose (fois gras with some fig jelly and a glass of sauternes, if you please my good man)
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/ambrose_hearne/4666259934/url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl]Hakarl[/url]– fermented/ partially decayed shark flesh from Iceland.
It was so unbelieveably awful that I giggled my way through the two! bits I ate. The brennvin (caraway schnapps) that accompanies it was the only saving grace.
To quote from the Wikipaedia article:
Chef Anthony Bourdain, who has travelled extensively throughout the world sampling local cuisine for his Travel Channel show No Reservations, has described shark þorramatur as "the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing" he has ever eaten.
Chef Gordon Ramsay challenged journalist James May to sample three "delicacies" (Laotian snake whiskey, bull penis, and hákarl); Gordon Ramsay then vomited after eating hákarl, although May kept his down. May's only reaction was "You disappoint me, Ramsay."[1]
On season 2's Iceland episode of Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Andrew Zimmern described the smell as reminding him of "some of the most horrific things I've ever breathed in my life," but said the taste was not nearly as bad as the smell. Nonetheless, he did note that hákarl was hardcore food and not for beginners.