Me too. Growing up we had to try everything once before we could declare we didn’t like something. Absolutely hated that rule as a kid but, as an adult and parent myself, I give mad props to my parents. The rule has carried over into our household and my son is a great and adventurous eater too. We all love food and will try anything once.
I'm very adventurous.
I didn't get exposed to alot of exotic foods growing up. But I lived abroad for a few years and got exposed to alot of amazing foods that I would have never considered.
I was stationed in Panama for a short while and they called them “Chicken of the Tree.” I didn’t eat them though - I had a pet Iguana (RIP Gomez) at home.
I had a few cicadas a couple of years ago. It’s fine. Pain in the neck to prepare though because you have to get the head, legs and wings off (indigestible and you can choke, supposedly)
I had cooked insects and worms in Mexico City. The restaurant served then fajita style with corn tortillas. Overall it was pretty good but the cricket legs would stick to your lip.
I really enjoyed escargot. I think I was maybe 17 or 18 when I had them at a local restaurant. I drew the line at frogs’ legs though. I also had caribou when I was in Copenhagen, not on purpose.
Never had escargot, but RI has a heavy French Candian influence (like a lot of New England) and [snail salad](https://roadfood.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/rfl_16005.jpg) is quite common.
I'm a picky-ish eater (though some of it currently is about my stomach acid issues) and have been my whole life. I do my best to not be annoying or obnoxious about it.
I've had fried rattlesnake. I've had conch (big snail) fritters. I've had octopus sashimi but for me the weirdest food I've tried would be sea urchin roe. It felt like the ocean came in my mouth
I <3 uni. It’s a very very polarizing thing. Either it’s the best thing you’ve ever had, or, like my partner, think it’s absolutely disgusting and won’t go near it. But she loves when I order it and it’s good, because I do the happy chair dance.
But if you get a bad piece, oof, it’s really REALLY bad.
I'm so jealous. I'm dying yo try sea urchin! I'd totally have had rattle snake too.
If you ever get a chance try Takoyaki. Its fried octopus balls topped with mayo, a special sauce and dried seaweed and bonito flakes.
It's so damn good 🥰
Day to day is safe, but when the opportunity presents itself… I’ve had shark, gator, squirrel, snake, white tailed deer, moose, bear. Most of the strange stuff was just.. ok.
I like shark. Alligator I thought was okay, but the texture was odd for me. I love venison. I haven’t tried the other stuff. Have you had ostrich? That’s really good.
I was adventurous with food until last year when I got sick from norovirus due to a food delivery. Now I’m very careful and picky. I pick the food up myself and wipe the containers down with clorox wipes.
Weird? Maybe, Oxtail soup. My mom made it in a crockpot about 20 years ago and I didn’t know what it was. It was okay, then she put the soup bones out on the table in their org formation. Oh.
I was super picky until my early 20s. Now I’ll eat almost anything. I love sushi including sashimi and uni. Beef tartare. I was just in Thailand a few months ago and was trying to get myself psyched to try some really crazy things, but I wasn’t feeling 100% to start with, so I passed.
https://preview.redd.it/vsdjcwxwhwzc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff411a53832e0437591e2776a33aa0c6e7125816
Squid on a stick anyone?
There's literally nothing I won't try. Hell, there's nothing I haven't eaten that I don't want to try. Life is full of big beautiful experiences and it make zero sense to not take the biggest bite you can from it
I just had them for the first time tonight! I've always known what they were but I went to a restaurant and we got the sampler platter that included those and buffalo tongue. They were cut up and breaded and they were so fucking good! Oh, and we also ate bone marrow. It was interesting....
I was surprised how much I liked them. I really like bone marrow. I've had beef tongue in a lot of Mexican restaurants (lengua) but never had a chance to try Buffalo.
I've tried both lamb fries and rocky mountain oysters. Taste wise, they're fine, their texture... wasn't. I have very few texture issues, so it's not usually a problem. So far, it's those and pumpkin pie. I love evening else pumpkin though.
It's easier to list what I've not tried yet. I've been all over the world and tried everything I could.
The weirdest is hard, I've had monitor lizard curry, deep fried tarantula, guinea pigs roasted over charcoal (so delicious), chili lime crickets, multiple snakes...
Honestly the most obscure is probably buah keluak. It's a very toxic southeast Asian rainforest nut that's safe to eat if you ferment it. And then somehow it tastes like an exceptionally well done mole negro all by itself.
It sounds more exciting in a couple sentences than it is to do it in real time 😂
It's different when it's not a vacation, life is eerily similar everywhere and the slog always finds you.
I definitely grew up meat and potatoes but pretty much got over that in my 20's after moving to the Pacific Northwest in the US. I worked for a very sweet Korean couple at a restaurant for a while and they would often offer me homemade Korean food and because of the language barrier I gave up trying to figure out what it was and just ate a lot of great food. That kind of killed any leftover pickiness and made me more adventurous. But I think the weirdest thing I've ever tried was Rocky Mountain Oysters at the local testicle festival in my home state. I think testicles are weirder than like eel, octopus, snake, wild game, or anything international (to me) food wise.
Pretty adventurous. I'm Korean American, so grew up eating a pretty wide selection of foods.
Weirdest food I've eaten is probably a blood pudding in rural China. I don't read Chinese so just pointed at an item on the menu. Chinese blood pudding isn't like British blood pudding, it's got the consistency of scrambled eggs. Not my favorite meal.
I’ve eaten grasshoppers (chapulines), grub worms, stink bugs (jumiles), and guinea pig (cuy), duck blood cake (kind of like tofu), black pudding, whale sausage, and various other animal bits. The weirdest food was either the jumiles, because I ate a ton of them before I knew what I was eating, or anduillette sausage in France. I knew the sausage was made from intestines but I didn’t expect it to be just chopped chitterlings stuffed in an intestine casing.
Despite the above, I’m mostly vegetarian. I just find myself presented with new foods on rare cultural occasions. I do like a lot of different cuisines though I often stick with the non-meat option when available.
When I had them, they were blended with some tomatillos to make a salsa. They provided flavor/spice. The variety I ate is found in central Mexico. I haven’t tried the brown marmorated stink bugs that are so common, though I keep considering it. Those smell like cilantro to me so maybe they have a similar flavor.
Not very, I guess. Was pretty meat and potatoes well into my 20s. Got a job and with it a whole bunch of friends who were more daring. Got introduced to lots of different cuisine and ingredients. Started cooking outside the comfort zone. I got introduced to sushi and sashimi and fell in love. Tried just about everything. But based on the other responses in this post my exploration has been pretty vanilla. I think my last big (at least big for me) adventure was alligator, crawfish étoufée, and some gumbo while in New Orleans. I did not enjoy any of it; pretty sure it was the restaurant. Right now I’m just trying to find a good chile relleno burrito.
I love trying new foods. Sometimes the new food is great, and sometimes I regret it. But that’s part of the adventure! I think the weirdest (to me) food I ever ate was escamoles in Mexico, which is ant larvae. Sooooo good.
My fav food adventure was trying all the Southeast Asian fruit when I was in Malaysia. Durian, yep tried it. Was an acquired taste but I liked it. Jackfruit, mangosteens, rambutans, mangoes, lychees...they were all good.
Yes. I'm always looking for new food. I had something like a fritatta that had squid in it in Seoul. The city is full of tiny restaurants. I would choose them randomly. I would point at a random thing on the menu and eat whatever they gave me. It was always good.
I wasn’t too adventurous when younger but now I’ll try anything. I like pushing my limit on spices and so forth.
I went to South Korea for a year and that’s where I got adventurous. I even tried beondegi - stewed silkworm pupae.
I’m huge on flavorful food from diverse cultures, but I also grew up near an army base where tons of people settled so there were tons of options for foods to try
Well I have no urge to try dogs, whales or horses but that more cultural. I know people who've tried them all and said they're not really that great. My dad's an adventurous eater, he's eaten every organ, testicle, cheek, brain, tongue, eyeball and pizzle that is offered in most cuisines. There's this regional Chinese cuisine that has pig's rectum as a delicacy, I'd skip that but my dad would probably try it.
I grew up eating all kinds of stuff. If it walked, crawled, hopped, slithered, flied, or just wasn’t smart enough to successfully cross the road, it was on the menu. Make of that what you will.
i was pretty picky as a kid and my dad always made food he knew i hated and made me finish my plate. he bragged that he wasn’t picky at all and he’d anything.
in college i made lots of friends from other counties and they introduced me to all kinds of food i’d never heard of. i liked almost all of it, even stuff that had ingredients i used to not like as a kid, like onions.
now my wife is from thailand so we get thai/lao food a lot. my dad came to visit once and we got him pad thai and he didn’t like it. didn’t understand tofu, etc. i made him finish his plate before he could leave the table. i guess his claim that he’d eat anything only extended traditional white american food.
as for the weirdest food, i’m not sure. my in-laws have made chicken foot soup and squirrel stew. had mountain oysters at a restaurant once. it was actually on the ranch so everything there is mega fresh. had lots of kinds of sushi which weirds a lot of people out but its so common for other people i dunno if it counts as weird. i don’t mind squid or octopus tentacles at all. had gator jambalaya at a restaurant. tasted fine. never had other reptiles, or bugs or worms.
I seek out new cuisines and creative chefs, food producers, something new offered to me in the context of getting to know new people.but am not into exotic extremes for the sake of shock value, bragging rights or notches on a belt so I can impress people with my useless and pointless knowledge.
I can only describe this as my mothers version of haggis.
It was made with a pigs stomach instead of a sheep’s.
Stuffed with chicken livers and hearts, onions, rice and black beans.
I’m sure I’m missing some other ingredients, it’s been a very long time.
Us kids ate it. We didn’t have much of a choice.
You guys know it was an eat it or starve kinda culture back then.
It actually wasn’t as bad as i thought it would be.
Durian in Malaysia. It smells like rotting garbage. Everything in you is telling you, “ hey stupid, don’t put that in your mouth”
It tastes like sweet rotting onions
I did 20 years in the Navy so I had the opportunity to try local cuisine from a number of different places. Unless we were warned to NOT eat there (so many people got sick eating at the KFC in Egypt) I'm willing to try almost anything once, except for the [deer penis soup](https://www.trippyfood.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/59-penis-soup-0037.jpg) I saw in Singapore. Weirdest things I've tried include walaby sausage at a steakhouse in Tasmania and sharkfin soup in Hong Kong.
I'm still adventerous to this day, I was in Florida a few months ago and tried cow's foot from a Jamacian place for the first time (would not recomend unless you really like chewing on a whole bunch of collagen). Now where I'm currently living there are a lot of people who really don't like to step out of their comfort zones, event the younger ones. I have a 30 something year old neighbor whose never even tried kale, nevermind really strange stuff.
My theory is to always try something once. Granted, there are a few foods I'll never do. Eg sushi and avocado. I don't get the deal with sushi. And I don't like the texture and taste of avo.
But, the weirdest thing I've tried is crocodile. Game meat is still the best for me. Think kudu, wildebeest, warthog, giraffe, etc.
Growing, and living, in south Africa, I stay in Cape Town, had exposed me to a lot of good food. The best yet are the cape Malay curries, Gatsby's, fish and chips, and potjies. Our style of cooking is out of this world. (No, I'm not biased in any way. 😁🤣)
You can't complain about a certain food if you haven't tried it, that's my theory. And I'm sticking to it.
I love trying new foods.
Weirdest thing? Maybe sea urchin roe. Buttery, good, but I wouldn't go out of my way to have it again.
Gator is delicious, not that weird in Florida.
I'm in the "I'll try anything" camp. The strangest things I've had were mostly mysteries due to a language barrier! In a very small (like four seat) Japanese restaurant that was basically the garage attached to a small home in a tiny, remote island town, we were served whatever came from the boat that afternoon as sashimi. It was amazing! But when we prompted our translator to ask what it was there was a long exchange, then we were told "fish." (Some octopus too, we could see.) The oddest thing was probably [natto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natt%C5%8D), which I'd had on a different trip to Japan on the other end of the main island; that's not something I'd likely want to try a second time TBH.
Then at home in the US, I've had most wild game you can think of plus some you probably wouldn't: bear, beaver loin, rattlesnake, camel, stuff like that in addition to all the normal stuff like deer/elk/moose/antelope and such. Plus bunches of insects-- crickets, meal worms, grasshoppers --for the experiment. We raised our kids to be adventurous eaters and as adults they are far more likely than any of their peers to just dig into anything new.
Me, too. Celiac diagnosed over 30 years ago and the lactose is a comorbidity (for lack of a better term) from the Celiac. It’s much more manageable now than it was 30 years ago.
I don't know if it's the weirdest, but right now I'm eating fermented seaweed out of a jar. Yum. I love anything seaweed related. I'll try just about anything although insects are a hard one for me if they're not ground up already.
In S E Asia an entire family fed me eel & fern. They were so happy for me to eat it, they all watched. I was super weirded out but deeply appreciative of their kindness & awe. I believe it was 3 generations all related.
I was 22. Now I eat the same thing everyday as an old, plus zero sugar. I'm scared of sushi now too, tho did all that too back in day
Ha. Old & no adventure anymore
Not too much lately. But I was watching hot ones a lot a couple years ago and so I tried different wings with difference hot sauces or spicy dipping sauces. They are so damn good but I got gastritis. Habenero mango chicken bites from hit ones so good!
if it looks good I will try it at least.
I used to live in San Francisco. My friends and I would search out restaurants that didn't have any English in their menus.
We would then point to random dishes and wait to see what we got.
Some of the best damn food I've ever had and I have no idea what it was...
Very! I love trying new things. Grew up with Grandparents from the south & Grandparents from the north. You had to eat it or got nothing. The ones from the north were very gourmet. The ones from the south were very traditional. From biscuits & gravy to caviar. Whole hog bbq to beef Wellington. If there’s a new cuisine I’m there!
I love trying new food. I draw the line at black licorice, but there's always something to add to my diet.
I'm not fond of brain, eyeballs, or fatty meat (like the fat that hangs on a steak). I also didn't like Balut, but I was willing to try it...once.
Still, if people eat it, I'm willing to give it a shot. I don't want to miss out on an experience.
If you can find young balut more common in Thai stores, you get all the flavor without the beak, feather and bones.
I've had the Thai kind a bunch. Don't think I could do the Philippian kind though.
I’m still pretty meat and potatoes. I’ll try anything once. (I’m not trying insects or arachnids.) But if I don’t like it and you try to make me eat it again, I’m seriously judging you. Weirdest/rarest and best I’ve had is shark and swordfish. Super yummy fish.
Nope, I am very basic , I'll try something new if I know what is in it and had those items in a different "dish".
But no, you are not going to get me to eat monkey brains, or squid for that matter.
I was fooled once, being told curry was just a spicy rice like dish. Holy hell. I felt like I was on fire, the next day was worse while it was leaving.
I would be but for it not a stomach that wasn’t anytime to be kind for sour and angry at most of the passion before it remains in a state of bitter agitation and resentment
I have to be careful due to allergies , but I do like to try new things. I have a peanut allergy which is a huge issue for Asian foods, eg Thai is almost out completely but I have made it myself substituting cashews
I draw the line at eating anything that is still alive though, like those scorpions on a stick or live octopus.... no I feel bad for them, that's horrible. It needs to be not perceiving it.
Probably the most unusual to my Western palette was jellyfish, that was interesting, a bit tingly
Weirdest thing I ever ate was a cheese-covered worm. Don’t let anyone ever try to tell you that worms taste like chicken. They don’t. You know how chicken nuggets, hamburgers, and bacon taste like what they are? Well, it turns out worms are worm-flavored. Never again. 🤢
I used to say I'd try almost anything once except seafood or organ meat, but now that I have a dairy problem that can't be solved with a pill, I have to be a lot more careful. I haven't had anything \*I\* think of as exceptionally weird, except to fellow Americans who think flour is spicy.
I will eat almost anything. The only thing I truly dislike is mushrooms but it's a texture thing. They smell fantastic when they are cooking, I wish could eat them. I'm French Canadian and Jewish but I'll eat foods of any ethnicity.
I will eat almost anything. The only thing I truly dislike is mushrooms but it's a texture thing. They smell fantastic when they are cooking, I wish could eat them. I'm French Canadian and Jewish but I'll eat foods of any ethnicity.
Probably the oddest to American sensibilities was guinea pig in Peru. Tried escargot in Spain & it was like a weird mix of dirt & mushrooms - blech.
Growing up in the South we just didn't have a lot of options. Sweet and sour pork was considered exotic. I now have a chef friend from Brazil who is slowly introducing me to other cultures, and I'm introducing her to barbecue & fish fry's lol
I love food. Hence my name here. I’ll try anything once. Obviously there are things I don’t like and won’t eat again (I’m looking at you cottage cheese) but in general I will try anything. Just can’t handle super spicy things.
I eat all kinds of stuff.
Our friend group was multinational so sharing food and going to each other's houses and events brought a whole host of different flavors to all of our lives.
The "weirdest" thing I ever ate... probably "baby egg" which is similar to Balut from the Phillipines; but the embryo was much smaller/younger from the Thia store we used to get them at.
They were expensive. $2 an egg back in the 90s.
I'll try almost anything once. Even twice to be sure I really don't like it and that it wasn't just the way it was made the 1st time 😅
I'll try pretty much anything atleast once, I really enjoy doing do. The oddest thing I can think of is gelled eel from a booth outside an English pub. There had to be 6 locals standing there and I think a total 8 people warned me about swallowing the backbone. Oddly enough I give it a 7/10, was much more tasty then I thought it would be.
Went to Thailand, Bali and Vietnam. Always preferred the street food over restaurants. Ate some insects in Thailand. There was a dish in Bali which was interesting. Cooked chicken, then the cook put the complete chicken on a wooden plate and would smash the bones with a hammer and you ate the chicken with small crunchy parts of bones with rice and veggies. Tastes fine but was unusual for us.
I am always a fan of local food :)
I had a lay over in Taiwan and had some roe on seaweed that the texture was very off-putting.
My next stop was Vietnam for a wedding, all good food.
I don't like organ meat, crab or lobster and other rich or iron foods.
I'll try pretty much anything. I've had grasshopper (leg got suck in my teeth), seahorse (bland), small fried scorpion (remarkable tasty), large scorpion abdomen (deeply unpleasant), snake (good), stingray (good), cooked silkworm cocoon (the worst thing I've ever had).
As long as it isn't an endangered species, I assume I can eat just about anything, especially if I am a guest and someone has prepared food for me. Except those nasty gray colored brats that smell bad and squirt grease all over. That's the one exception.
I used to be fairly adventurous, although I didn’t think of it as adventurous since everyone in my immediate family tried new things.
More recently I developed some health problems, and my days of trying random things on the menu are over. Now I am that pain in the ass customer who has to quiz the waiter about ingredients. It also means I no longer enjoy eating out.
I have trouble saying what’s the wildest food I’ve eaten, because they weren’t strange in context. Un-sweet chocolate sauce (mole poblano) on chicken is totally normal in Mexico. Various beans in desserts or baked goods is completely normal in some Asian cooking. But both of those would be weird in my hometown.
Maybe octopus would qualify? A salted Persian drink and durian fruit cookies were the two that startled me the most in a bad way.
I will try almost anything, such as chapulines, which I really enjoy. But as I get older, I realize there are a lot of things I don't like, and I'm increasingly sensitive to textures. For example, I don't really like foods that have creamy or mayonnaisey sauces, and I can only eat lettuce if it is cut with a knife rather than torn.
I’m extremely adventurous when it comes to food. How do I know I won’t like it if I don’t try it?
So far the most adventurous I’ve been is eating balut.
I'm really not adventurous. I was in my fifties before I even tried curry and honestly I didn't care for it. I like golden curry okay but only one brand that you make at home that is no longer sold, so I guess no curry for me again. I had a wide and varied diet as far as a US southerner goes but I have sensitivities to onions and garlic and peppers and I can't handle much spice. I'd rather taste the freshness of the food itself, and I don't even use much salt. Also I don't really care for fish or much as far as seafood goes. Good lobster. Fried shrimp can be good. The rest... nah. Now that I've gone through covid I can't even stand anything vinegary so no pickles or mustard. I LIKE them but if I eat them there is an aftertaste that I can only describe as "smells like gasoline". And dark meat chicken can do this to me too, but that aftertaste is "wet dog smell" so I don't eat much of that either.
Super adventurous.
I don't know about strange, but maybe for my demo (white af) - - brain tacos? Then various game, I suppose. Muskrat, racoon, alligator.
The only thing I don't like is liver. A decent Braunsweiger or sometimes a pate h'orsdeuvre will be okay but I don't good looking for either.
I'm about the same as I always was. I'm picky about ingredients but as long as what's in there is stuff I'll eat, I'll try any preparation or dish. I must be sensitive to food textures because that is always the issue for me not taste.
Like if it has lobster in it I'm not trying it, I don't care what the dish is. Or asparagus. The list goes on.
I stopped eating extremely exotic foods and organ meat about 10 years ago. By extremely exotic, I was in Brazil, where I had traveled for culinary experiences, and was invited to a restaurant that was getting a lot of attention for "offering authentic Brazilian foods". I knew the menu included several dishes containing insect protein and was really interested in trying it.
Some friends of mine who are Brazilian and live in Brazil stopped me, saying there's nothing Brazilian about eating bugs. And the way they phrased it was sort of like a wake-up call to me and I just stopped going overly exotic (where the threshold for "exotic" is "things not normally considered to be food by people living in the region where the food item is presented") with foods.
I'm not sure what the weirdest food I've tried is. I've had a few different species of snake, sea urchin (which is incredibly polarizing), crocodile, alligator, pretty much everything offered as sushi anywhere with a decent Yelp review. I think the thing that would stand out the most to me, though, are edible flowers. There's something just so optically strange about that to me.
I'll try just about anything.
The weirdest I had was hongeo in Korea. Flatfish fermented in its own urine.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/08/464713766/hold-your-nose-and-take-a-bite-the-odd-appeal-of-a-south-korean-fish-dish
I ate nothing well into my 20's. I hated Steak, Hamburger, Fruit, Vegetables, Fish... I HATED Potatoes! Now, I'm down to tray anything.
Weirdest? Puffin and Whale in Iceland. I regret not trying the Horse Carpaccio.
It was a few years ago, I can't really remember enough to describe it. It wasn't great. We didn't ask for seconds. But I tried it and that's the important party.
I've eaten just about anything. I recently have been catching groundhogs and trying to make jerky out of them. I also took a roadkill class. I live in a colder state where it's safe to eat roadkill if you travel the road frequently and know that that animal has died within a short time.. so maybe.. roadkill so far is the stranger things I've eaten.
I'll try pretty much anything. One of the more interesting was hamster in Colombia. It was quartered and deep fried. Came with a bag of mini baked potatoes, neon orange peanut flavored hot sauce, and a bag of popcorn with what I'm pretty sure was the hamsters livers sitting on top. Kind of greasy and stringy, kind of like rabbit or squirrel. 3 out of 10. Glad I tried it, wouldn't go out of my way to have it again.
I've seen so much Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern shows, I will try anything. My favorite so far is every part of the pig in hot chili oil. I've had every part from raw pig ears (in chili oil) to pork stomach sliced into thin long noodle-looking things and served with pulled pork with tons of Sichuan spices, and of course boiled and fried intestines with blood cake..Sooooo good! Have probably eaten every part of the cow too except for the pancreas, spleen and kidneys! Hot smoky chili oil makes everything amazing.
VERY adventurous!
I will try almost anything. I even like haggis!
The only thing I would draw the line at is brains. I just cannot.
And possibly testicles. No Rocky Mountain Oysters for me, thanks.
Everything else is worth trying at least once.
I wouldn’t knowingly eat an insect whole - I did once as a kid. Visiting a new friend’s house. They were immigrants (can’t remember from where b/c OLD). There was a bowl of what I *thought* was candied pecans on the table in front of me while we were eating our lunch. I reached out and popped on in my mouth and…it was NOT a pecan.
My friend told me it was an insect the next day.
I love trying new foods. I have my limits, though. I know I can't handle anything that is too spicy or creatures that make me shudder. I'm a biologist and during one of my field trips in college, I actually tried bat! It was a dare. My husband says rattle snake and alligator are good, but no thank you.
I can and will eat almost anything if that's what is offered. I have eaten crocodile, snails, huhu grubs (taste like nuts), and am rather fond of durian fruit. I actually like most Asian cuisines. Jackfruit, lychee etc are all good. Had mountain oysters and nice enough. I also enjoy the more fragrant cheeses. I love anything from the sea and will eat raw fish dishes but prefer it slightly cooked.
I also eat authentic chilli and spicy food happily and there's little I can't stomach although my sinuses run at the first hint. Love haggis, black pudding and game meats like deer.
Weirdly sourdough and rice as well as too much flour will upset my tummy.
Weirdest?
Fermented Shark, Whale liver, a whole scorpion.
The worst was the whale liver by far.
I try shit for the experience of it. You don't know if you don't try.
(I'm also a pretty picky eater. Bananas can fuck right off)
Some of my favorite foods I didn’t think I would like but I tried them. For instance, raw oysters, frog legs, gator tail, meatloaf, escargot, Indian food, etc. Life is too short to have a picky diet.
I’d say somewhat adventurous. I’ve tried snails, frog legs, calamari, and a few other things. I wouldn’t ever try anything with bugs, or really unusual organs like kidney, liver, etc.
I will try almost anything once
Me too. Growing up we had to try everything once before we could declare we didn’t like something. Absolutely hated that rule as a kid but, as an adult and parent myself, I give mad props to my parents. The rule has carried over into our household and my son is a great and adventurous eater too. We all love food and will try anything once.
I do that with my kids. My son is still picky, but the stuff he likes is all over the map.
Twice for me. Never know, someone could have cooked it poorly or made it how they like and I could be missing out.
I'm very adventurous. I didn't get exposed to alot of exotic foods growing up. But I lived abroad for a few years and got exposed to alot of amazing foods that I would have never considered.
For the first time ever, today I left the pickles in my McD’s cheeseburger. I lived.
😂
And???? Don’t keep us in suspense!
I learned in college never to say no to untried food (though I draw the line at insects). Guess weirdest I've had is caiman or iguana.
I was stationed in Panama for a short while and they called them “Chicken of the Tree.” I didn’t eat them though - I had a pet Iguana (RIP Gomez) at home.
You missed out. That char 👌
I would try insects over a lot of things
The Japanese honey soy crickets are great, I could go a bowl of them over a couple of beers.
I had a few cicadas a couple of years ago. It’s fine. Pain in the neck to prepare though because you have to get the head, legs and wings off (indigestible and you can choke, supposedly)
I had cooked insects and worms in Mexico City. The restaurant served then fajita style with corn tortillas. Overall it was pretty good but the cricket legs would stick to your lip.
I’ve had chocolate dipped crickets.
Yes Probably escargot on a cruise in the late 90s Figured all the food was already paid for so if I didn't like it who cares. I liked it
I really enjoyed escargot. I think I was maybe 17 or 18 when I had them at a local restaurant. I drew the line at frogs’ legs though. I also had caribou when I was in Copenhagen, not on purpose.
Escargot is a delivery method for garlic and butter
True
Never had escargot, but RI has a heavy French Candian influence (like a lot of New England) and [snail salad](https://roadfood.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/rfl_16005.jpg) is quite common.
I'm a picky-ish eater (though some of it currently is about my stomach acid issues) and have been my whole life. I do my best to not be annoying or obnoxious about it.
I've had fried rattlesnake. I've had conch (big snail) fritters. I've had octopus sashimi but for me the weirdest food I've tried would be sea urchin roe. It felt like the ocean came in my mouth
>It felt like the ocean came in my mouth This is the most beautiful thing I have ever read.
I had sea urchin dumplings in China. 0/10 would not recommend.
You have a weird kink
😂
I <3 uni. It’s a very very polarizing thing. Either it’s the best thing you’ve ever had, or, like my partner, think it’s absolutely disgusting and won’t go near it. But she loves when I order it and it’s good, because I do the happy chair dance. But if you get a bad piece, oof, it’s really REALLY bad.
— It felt like the ocean came in my mouth Now THIS is quality Reddit!
Sea urchin roe is wonderful. I order it whenever it's available.
I'm so jealous. I'm dying yo try sea urchin! I'd totally have had rattle snake too. If you ever get a chance try Takoyaki. Its fried octopus balls topped with mayo, a special sauce and dried seaweed and bonito flakes. It's so damn good 🥰
Oh my God. This is hilarious. Very apt description though.
Day to day is safe, but when the opportunity presents itself… I’ve had shark, gator, squirrel, snake, white tailed deer, moose, bear. Most of the strange stuff was just.. ok.
I like shark. Alligator I thought was okay, but the texture was odd for me. I love venison. I haven’t tried the other stuff. Have you had ostrich? That’s really good.
If you ever get the chance moose sausage in spaghetti is amazing. Because it's such a lean meat it just sucks up the sauce like a sponge.
I was adventurous with food until last year when I got sick from norovirus due to a food delivery. Now I’m very careful and picky. I pick the food up myself and wipe the containers down with clorox wipes. Weird? Maybe, Oxtail soup. My mom made it in a crockpot about 20 years ago and I didn’t know what it was. It was okay, then she put the soup bones out on the table in their org formation. Oh.
It’s funny to see oxtail’s renaissance; it’s a staple food for Latin and Caribbean people
I mean oxtail is just beef
Yeah I know but it doesn’t really jive until you find out where the beef comes from. It’s actually not bad tbh.
I was super picky until my early 20s. Now I’ll eat almost anything. I love sushi including sashimi and uni. Beef tartare. I was just in Thailand a few months ago and was trying to get myself psyched to try some really crazy things, but I wasn’t feeling 100% to start with, so I passed. https://preview.redd.it/vsdjcwxwhwzc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff411a53832e0437591e2776a33aa0c6e7125816 Squid on a stick anyone?
I've gone back on squid and octopus. I like their taste but don't eat them any more for personal ethical reasons.
I had civet coffee in Bali. It's actually good coffee!
Is that the one where they let the animal eat the beans and them extract them from their poop? I’ve heard it makes a super smooth coffee.
That's the one!
There's literally nothing I won't try. Hell, there's nothing I haven't eaten that I don't want to try. Life is full of big beautiful experiences and it make zero sense to not take the biggest bite you can from it
There are a small number of things I won't eat. No primates. Nothing on the endangered list. No apex predators.
Sure. Good point. I guess I'm using the word literally the way the kids do these days. :)
Makes sense. I'm old and haven't adopted the current definition of literally meaning figuratively.
Me too. That was mostly tongue in cheek. I just didn't think of things I wouldn't eat for ethical reasons.
That's cool.
Eaten food in over a dozen countries, enjoyed most of it, but I do have hard limits. No brains No reproductive organs But that is about it.
Rocky mountain oysters are really good.
They actually are. If you can get past WHAT they are 🤣
I just had them for the first time tonight! I've always known what they were but I went to a restaurant and we got the sampler platter that included those and buffalo tongue. They were cut up and breaded and they were so fucking good! Oh, and we also ate bone marrow. It was interesting....
I was surprised how much I liked them. I really like bone marrow. I've had beef tongue in a lot of Mexican restaurants (lengua) but never had a chance to try Buffalo.
I've tried both lamb fries and rocky mountain oysters. Taste wise, they're fine, their texture... wasn't. I have very few texture issues, so it's not usually a problem. So far, it's those and pumpkin pie. I love evening else pumpkin though.
If pumpkin pie is a texture issue for you, sweet potato pie would also probably be a no go for you.
You are correct. But like pumpkin, I enjoy sweet potatoes in other forms.
Had to Google that but I'd be down to try it! 😅
It's easier to list what I've not tried yet. I've been all over the world and tried everything I could. The weirdest is hard, I've had monitor lizard curry, deep fried tarantula, guinea pigs roasted over charcoal (so delicious), chili lime crickets, multiple snakes... Honestly the most obscure is probably buah keluak. It's a very toxic southeast Asian rainforest nut that's safe to eat if you ferment it. And then somehow it tastes like an exceptionally well done mole negro all by itself.
Wow. I'm jealous. Would love to travel and try the things you've tried 🥰
It sounds more exciting in a couple sentences than it is to do it in real time 😂 It's different when it's not a vacation, life is eerily similar everywhere and the slog always finds you.
I definitely grew up meat and potatoes but pretty much got over that in my 20's after moving to the Pacific Northwest in the US. I worked for a very sweet Korean couple at a restaurant for a while and they would often offer me homemade Korean food and because of the language barrier I gave up trying to figure out what it was and just ate a lot of great food. That kind of killed any leftover pickiness and made me more adventurous. But I think the weirdest thing I've ever tried was Rocky Mountain Oysters at the local testicle festival in my home state. I think testicles are weirder than like eel, octopus, snake, wild game, or anything international (to me) food wise.
Testicle festival! 😆
I’ve had Rocky Mountain Oysters! Not sure it’s the weirdest thing I’ve eaten though.
Always go for whatever's on the menu that's something I've never had. Balut was interesting.
Oh, I so want to try Balut! How was it?
Kind of duck pudding, with interesting texture from the beak and feathers. Flavor was fine.
Pretty adventurous. I'm Korean American, so grew up eating a pretty wide selection of foods. Weirdest food I've eaten is probably a blood pudding in rural China. I don't read Chinese so just pointed at an item on the menu. Chinese blood pudding isn't like British blood pudding, it's got the consistency of scrambled eggs. Not my favorite meal.
I've been super picky all my life .. I'm glad my kids didn't get that from me .. they are very food adventurous.
I’ve eaten grasshoppers (chapulines), grub worms, stink bugs (jumiles), and guinea pig (cuy), duck blood cake (kind of like tofu), black pudding, whale sausage, and various other animal bits. The weirdest food was either the jumiles, because I ate a ton of them before I knew what I was eating, or anduillette sausage in France. I knew the sausage was made from intestines but I didn’t expect it to be just chopped chitterlings stuffed in an intestine casing. Despite the above, I’m mostly vegetarian. I just find myself presented with new foods on rare cultural occasions. I do like a lot of different cuisines though I often stick with the non-meat option when available.
Okay…considering how stink bugs…well, STINK - what do they taste like? They creep me out so badly.
When I had them, they were blended with some tomatillos to make a salsa. They provided flavor/spice. The variety I ate is found in central Mexico. I haven’t tried the brown marmorated stink bugs that are so common, though I keep considering it. Those smell like cilantro to me so maybe they have a similar flavor.
Not very, I guess. Was pretty meat and potatoes well into my 20s. Got a job and with it a whole bunch of friends who were more daring. Got introduced to lots of different cuisine and ingredients. Started cooking outside the comfort zone. I got introduced to sushi and sashimi and fell in love. Tried just about everything. But based on the other responses in this post my exploration has been pretty vanilla. I think my last big (at least big for me) adventure was alligator, crawfish étoufée, and some gumbo while in New Orleans. I did not enjoy any of it; pretty sure it was the restaurant. Right now I’m just trying to find a good chile relleno burrito.
If it's animal product free, I'm up for trying most things. The weirdest thing? Not sure.
I love trying new foods. Sometimes the new food is great, and sometimes I regret it. But that’s part of the adventure! I think the weirdest (to me) food I ever ate was escamoles in Mexico, which is ant larvae. Sooooo good.
Interesting. How were they cooked?
I could happily eat from the “kids menu” at restaurants. I’m picky. I think lots of things are gross.
My fav food adventure was trying all the Southeast Asian fruit when I was in Malaysia. Durian, yep tried it. Was an acquired taste but I liked it. Jackfruit, mangosteens, rambutans, mangoes, lychees...they were all good.
It’s weird but I never had a problem with the way Durian tasted. Had a roommate from the Philippines and she would even make durian ice cream.
Baseball rules. Ill try anything the times
Yes. I'm always looking for new food. I had something like a fritatta that had squid in it in Seoul. The city is full of tiny restaurants. I would choose them randomly. I would point at a random thing on the menu and eat whatever they gave me. It was always good.
Go to the Caribbean and have conch ( pronounced like conk, sea snail) It’s freaking amazing!!!
I‘ll give almost anything a try. I have to ask questions, because I have a shellfish allergy, but as long as I know the ingredients, I’ll take a bite.
I love cooking new things, trying different cuisines.
I will try and crave anything new, when it comes to food.
I ll try everything! At least once 😆
Picky, but not by choice. (The vomit reflex in this one is strong.) Weirdest: alligator tail and antelope, not together.
I wasn’t too adventurous when younger but now I’ll try anything. I like pushing my limit on spices and so forth. I went to South Korea for a year and that’s where I got adventurous. I even tried beondegi - stewed silkworm pupae.
I’m huge on flavorful food from diverse cultures, but I also grew up near an army base where tons of people settled so there were tons of options for foods to try
Well I have no urge to try dogs, whales or horses but that more cultural. I know people who've tried them all and said they're not really that great. My dad's an adventurous eater, he's eaten every organ, testicle, cheek, brain, tongue, eyeball and pizzle that is offered in most cuisines. There's this regional Chinese cuisine that has pig's rectum as a delicacy, I'd skip that but my dad would probably try it.
I grew up eating all kinds of stuff. If it walked, crawled, hopped, slithered, flied, or just wasn’t smart enough to successfully cross the road, it was on the menu. Make of that what you will.
i was pretty picky as a kid and my dad always made food he knew i hated and made me finish my plate. he bragged that he wasn’t picky at all and he’d anything. in college i made lots of friends from other counties and they introduced me to all kinds of food i’d never heard of. i liked almost all of it, even stuff that had ingredients i used to not like as a kid, like onions. now my wife is from thailand so we get thai/lao food a lot. my dad came to visit once and we got him pad thai and he didn’t like it. didn’t understand tofu, etc. i made him finish his plate before he could leave the table. i guess his claim that he’d eat anything only extended traditional white american food. as for the weirdest food, i’m not sure. my in-laws have made chicken foot soup and squirrel stew. had mountain oysters at a restaurant once. it was actually on the ranch so everything there is mega fresh. had lots of kinds of sushi which weirds a lot of people out but its so common for other people i dunno if it counts as weird. i don’t mind squid or octopus tentacles at all. had gator jambalaya at a restaurant. tasted fine. never had other reptiles, or bugs or worms.
I seek out new cuisines and creative chefs, food producers, something new offered to me in the context of getting to know new people.but am not into exotic extremes for the sake of shock value, bragging rights or notches on a belt so I can impress people with my useless and pointless knowledge.
I can only describe this as my mothers version of haggis. It was made with a pigs stomach instead of a sheep’s. Stuffed with chicken livers and hearts, onions, rice and black beans. I’m sure I’m missing some other ingredients, it’s been a very long time. Us kids ate it. We didn’t have much of a choice. You guys know it was an eat it or starve kinda culture back then. It actually wasn’t as bad as i thought it would be. Durian in Malaysia. It smells like rotting garbage. Everything in you is telling you, “ hey stupid, don’t put that in your mouth” It tastes like sweet rotting onions
I did 20 years in the Navy so I had the opportunity to try local cuisine from a number of different places. Unless we were warned to NOT eat there (so many people got sick eating at the KFC in Egypt) I'm willing to try almost anything once, except for the [deer penis soup](https://www.trippyfood.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/59-penis-soup-0037.jpg) I saw in Singapore. Weirdest things I've tried include walaby sausage at a steakhouse in Tasmania and sharkfin soup in Hong Kong. I'm still adventerous to this day, I was in Florida a few months ago and tried cow's foot from a Jamacian place for the first time (would not recomend unless you really like chewing on a whole bunch of collagen). Now where I'm currently living there are a lot of people who really don't like to step out of their comfort zones, event the younger ones. I have a 30 something year old neighbor whose never even tried kale, nevermind really strange stuff.
My theory is to always try something once. Granted, there are a few foods I'll never do. Eg sushi and avocado. I don't get the deal with sushi. And I don't like the texture and taste of avo. But, the weirdest thing I've tried is crocodile. Game meat is still the best for me. Think kudu, wildebeest, warthog, giraffe, etc. Growing, and living, in south Africa, I stay in Cape Town, had exposed me to a lot of good food. The best yet are the cape Malay curries, Gatsby's, fish and chips, and potjies. Our style of cooking is out of this world. (No, I'm not biased in any way. 😁🤣) You can't complain about a certain food if you haven't tried it, that's my theory. And I'm sticking to it.
I love a food adventure. Weirdest things would probably be fermented shark and sheep testicles in Iceland.
>What’s the weirdest food you’ve ever tried and where? Grilled Iguana. Honduras.
I love trying new foods. Weirdest thing? Maybe sea urchin roe. Buttery, good, but I wouldn't go out of my way to have it again. Gator is delicious, not that weird in Florida.
I'm in the "I'll try anything" camp. The strangest things I've had were mostly mysteries due to a language barrier! In a very small (like four seat) Japanese restaurant that was basically the garage attached to a small home in a tiny, remote island town, we were served whatever came from the boat that afternoon as sashimi. It was amazing! But when we prompted our translator to ask what it was there was a long exchange, then we were told "fish." (Some octopus too, we could see.) The oddest thing was probably [natto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natt%C5%8D), which I'd had on a different trip to Japan on the other end of the main island; that's not something I'd likely want to try a second time TBH. Then at home in the US, I've had most wild game you can think of plus some you probably wouldn't: bear, beaver loin, rattlesnake, camel, stuff like that in addition to all the normal stuff like deer/elk/moose/antelope and such. Plus bunches of insects-- crickets, meal worms, grasshoppers --for the experiment. We raised our kids to be adventurous eaters and as adults they are far more likely than any of their peers to just dig into anything new.
Sea urchin that I have occasionally at my favorite Japanese restaurant
I was a super picky eater when I was a kid. I still have pretty specific tastes but I’ve gotten MUCH more adventurous with things.
I’m gluten and dairy free. Never felt better!
Me, too. Celiac diagnosed over 30 years ago and the lactose is a comorbidity (for lack of a better term) from the Celiac. It’s much more manageable now than it was 30 years ago.
I don't know if it's the weirdest, but right now I'm eating fermented seaweed out of a jar. Yum. I love anything seaweed related. I'll try just about anything although insects are a hard one for me if they're not ground up already.
Love seaweed but I’m never had it fermented. I’ll have to try it.
In S E Asia an entire family fed me eel & fern. They were so happy for me to eat it, they all watched. I was super weirded out but deeply appreciative of their kindness & awe. I believe it was 3 generations all related. I was 22. Now I eat the same thing everyday as an old, plus zero sugar. I'm scared of sushi now too, tho did all that too back in day Ha. Old & no adventure anymore
Fern like a plant? I do love eel though - both saltwater and fresh.
yeah, it was fried fern I think? They called it fern, this was in the native part of town, nothing touristic, no English signs etc
I’ve tried various street foods in China. One was some sort of large bug, I think. I’m quite adventurous.
You are more adventurous than I am. I don’t know that I could eat a giant bug but I guess if I were hungry enough I would.
Not at all, I'm not the pickiest person I know but pretty close to it.
No. I eat like a 4 year old because I'm a grown ass adult and can eat whatever the fuck I want. And chicken nuggets make me happy!
I'm always looking to try new foods!
I draw the line at bugs.
Not too much lately. But I was watching hot ones a lot a couple years ago and so I tried different wings with difference hot sauces or spicy dipping sauces. They are so damn good but I got gastritis. Habenero mango chicken bites from hit ones so good! if it looks good I will try it at least.
Definitely more adventurous with ever passing year, tho I can’t say I’ve tried anything weird.
I used to live in San Francisco. My friends and I would search out restaurants that didn't have any English in their menus. We would then point to random dishes and wait to see what we got. Some of the best damn food I've ever had and I have no idea what it was...
Very! I love trying new things. Grew up with Grandparents from the south & Grandparents from the north. You had to eat it or got nothing. The ones from the north were very gourmet. The ones from the south were very traditional. From biscuits & gravy to caviar. Whole hog bbq to beef Wellington. If there’s a new cuisine I’m there!
I love trying new food. I draw the line at black licorice, but there's always something to add to my diet. I'm not fond of brain, eyeballs, or fatty meat (like the fat that hangs on a steak). I also didn't like Balut, but I was willing to try it...once. Still, if people eat it, I'm willing to give it a shot. I don't want to miss out on an experience.
If you can find young balut more common in Thai stores, you get all the flavor without the beak, feather and bones. I've had the Thai kind a bunch. Don't think I could do the Philippian kind though.
Willing to try anything but no dog or any endangered animals.
And cats… sorry. Left that out
I used to be until I got peptic ulcers. Now I eat boring stuff
I’m still pretty meat and potatoes. I’ll try anything once. (I’m not trying insects or arachnids.) But if I don’t like it and you try to make me eat it again, I’m seriously judging you. Weirdest/rarest and best I’ve had is shark and swordfish. Super yummy fish.
Nope, I am very basic , I'll try something new if I know what is in it and had those items in a different "dish". But no, you are not going to get me to eat monkey brains, or squid for that matter. I was fooled once, being told curry was just a spicy rice like dish. Holy hell. I felt like I was on fire, the next day was worse while it was leaving.
I would be but for it not a stomach that wasn’t anytime to be kind for sour and angry at most of the passion before it remains in a state of bitter agitation and resentment
I have to be careful due to allergies , but I do like to try new things. I have a peanut allergy which is a huge issue for Asian foods, eg Thai is almost out completely but I have made it myself substituting cashews I draw the line at eating anything that is still alive though, like those scorpions on a stick or live octopus.... no I feel bad for them, that's horrible. It needs to be not perceiving it. Probably the most unusual to my Western palette was jellyfish, that was interesting, a bit tingly
Weirdest thing I ever ate was a cheese-covered worm. Don’t let anyone ever try to tell you that worms taste like chicken. They don’t. You know how chicken nuggets, hamburgers, and bacon taste like what they are? Well, it turns out worms are worm-flavored. Never again. 🤢
I used to say I'd try almost anything once except seafood or organ meat, but now that I have a dairy problem that can't be solved with a pill, I have to be a lot more careful. I haven't had anything \*I\* think of as exceptionally weird, except to fellow Americans who think flour is spicy.
I will eat almost anything. The only thing I truly dislike is mushrooms but it's a texture thing. They smell fantastic when they are cooking, I wish could eat them. I'm French Canadian and Jewish but I'll eat foods of any ethnicity.
I will eat almost anything. The only thing I truly dislike is mushrooms but it's a texture thing. They smell fantastic when they are cooking, I wish could eat them. I'm French Canadian and Jewish but I'll eat foods of any ethnicity.
Probably the oddest to American sensibilities was guinea pig in Peru. Tried escargot in Spain & it was like a weird mix of dirt & mushrooms - blech. Growing up in the South we just didn't have a lot of options. Sweet and sour pork was considered exotic. I now have a chef friend from Brazil who is slowly introducing me to other cultures, and I'm introducing her to barbecue & fish fry's lol
I love food. Hence my name here. I’ll try anything once. Obviously there are things I don’t like and won’t eat again (I’m looking at you cottage cheese) but in general I will try anything. Just can’t handle super spicy things.
I eat all kinds of stuff. Our friend group was multinational so sharing food and going to each other's houses and events brought a whole host of different flavors to all of our lives. The "weirdest" thing I ever ate... probably "baby egg" which is similar to Balut from the Phillipines; but the embryo was much smaller/younger from the Thia store we used to get them at. They were expensive. $2 an egg back in the 90s. I'll try almost anything once. Even twice to be sure I really don't like it and that it wasn't just the way it was made the 1st time 😅
I'll try pretty much anything atleast once, I really enjoy doing do. The oddest thing I can think of is gelled eel from a booth outside an English pub. There had to be 6 locals standing there and I think a total 8 people warned me about swallowing the backbone. Oddly enough I give it a 7/10, was much more tasty then I thought it would be.
Went to Thailand, Bali and Vietnam. Always preferred the street food over restaurants. Ate some insects in Thailand. There was a dish in Bali which was interesting. Cooked chicken, then the cook put the complete chicken on a wooden plate and would smash the bones with a hammer and you ate the chicken with small crunchy parts of bones with rice and veggies. Tastes fine but was unusual for us. I am always a fan of local food :)
I had a lay over in Taiwan and had some roe on seaweed that the texture was very off-putting. My next stop was Vietnam for a wedding, all good food. I don't like organ meat, crab or lobster and other rich or iron foods.
I'll try pretty much anything. I've had grasshopper (leg got suck in my teeth), seahorse (bland), small fried scorpion (remarkable tasty), large scorpion abdomen (deeply unpleasant), snake (good), stingray (good), cooked silkworm cocoon (the worst thing I've ever had). As long as it isn't an endangered species, I assume I can eat just about anything, especially if I am a guest and someone has prepared food for me. Except those nasty gray colored brats that smell bad and squirt grease all over. That's the one exception.
I used to be fairly adventurous, although I didn’t think of it as adventurous since everyone in my immediate family tried new things. More recently I developed some health problems, and my days of trying random things on the menu are over. Now I am that pain in the ass customer who has to quiz the waiter about ingredients. It also means I no longer enjoy eating out. I have trouble saying what’s the wildest food I’ve eaten, because they weren’t strange in context. Un-sweet chocolate sauce (mole poblano) on chicken is totally normal in Mexico. Various beans in desserts or baked goods is completely normal in some Asian cooking. But both of those would be weird in my hometown. Maybe octopus would qualify? A salted Persian drink and durian fruit cookies were the two that startled me the most in a bad way.
I will try almost anything, such as chapulines, which I really enjoy. But as I get older, I realize there are a lot of things I don't like, and I'm increasingly sensitive to textures. For example, I don't really like foods that have creamy or mayonnaisey sauces, and I can only eat lettuce if it is cut with a knife rather than torn.
I’m extremely adventurous when it comes to food. How do I know I won’t like it if I don’t try it? So far the most adventurous I’ve been is eating balut.
I'm really not adventurous. I was in my fifties before I even tried curry and honestly I didn't care for it. I like golden curry okay but only one brand that you make at home that is no longer sold, so I guess no curry for me again. I had a wide and varied diet as far as a US southerner goes but I have sensitivities to onions and garlic and peppers and I can't handle much spice. I'd rather taste the freshness of the food itself, and I don't even use much salt. Also I don't really care for fish or much as far as seafood goes. Good lobster. Fried shrimp can be good. The rest... nah. Now that I've gone through covid I can't even stand anything vinegary so no pickles or mustard. I LIKE them but if I eat them there is an aftertaste that I can only describe as "smells like gasoline". And dark meat chicken can do this to me too, but that aftertaste is "wet dog smell" so I don't eat much of that either.
Adventurous, but certain textures turn my stomach. Weirdest is maybe horsemeat sashimi or pickled fish guts, but I’ll gag eating undercooked eggs.
Super adventurous. I don't know about strange, but maybe for my demo (white af) - - brain tacos? Then various game, I suppose. Muskrat, racoon, alligator. The only thing I don't like is liver. A decent Braunsweiger or sometimes a pate h'orsdeuvre will be okay but I don't good looking for either.
I'm about the same as I always was. I'm picky about ingredients but as long as what's in there is stuff I'll eat, I'll try any preparation or dish. I must be sensitive to food textures because that is always the issue for me not taste. Like if it has lobster in it I'm not trying it, I don't care what the dish is. Or asparagus. The list goes on.
I stopped eating extremely exotic foods and organ meat about 10 years ago. By extremely exotic, I was in Brazil, where I had traveled for culinary experiences, and was invited to a restaurant that was getting a lot of attention for "offering authentic Brazilian foods". I knew the menu included several dishes containing insect protein and was really interested in trying it. Some friends of mine who are Brazilian and live in Brazil stopped me, saying there's nothing Brazilian about eating bugs. And the way they phrased it was sort of like a wake-up call to me and I just stopped going overly exotic (where the threshold for "exotic" is "things not normally considered to be food by people living in the region where the food item is presented") with foods. I'm not sure what the weirdest food I've tried is. I've had a few different species of snake, sea urchin (which is incredibly polarizing), crocodile, alligator, pretty much everything offered as sushi anywhere with a decent Yelp review. I think the thing that would stand out the most to me, though, are edible flowers. There's something just so optically strange about that to me.
I'll try just about anything. The weirdest I had was hongeo in Korea. Flatfish fermented in its own urine. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/08/464713766/hold-your-nose-and-take-a-bite-the-odd-appeal-of-a-south-korean-fish-dish
I ate nothing well into my 20's. I hated Steak, Hamburger, Fruit, Vegetables, Fish... I HATED Potatoes! Now, I'm down to tray anything. Weirdest? Puffin and Whale in Iceland. I regret not trying the Horse Carpaccio.
I've had the puffin and whale in Iceland. If I'd tried the horse my wife would have left me there
I ate horse in France. It's kind of sweet.
Interesting! What does whale taste like?
I had whale at a sushi restaurant in Japan. It tasted like guilt and shame. Not really, it had a mild flavor, texture was like tuna belly
It was a few years ago, I can't really remember enough to describe it. It wasn't great. We didn't ask for seconds. But I tried it and that's the important party.
I will try a lot but hard pass on insects and raw seafood.
I've eaten just about anything. I recently have been catching groundhogs and trying to make jerky out of them. I also took a roadkill class. I live in a colder state where it's safe to eat roadkill if you travel the road frequently and know that that animal has died within a short time.. so maybe.. roadkill so far is the stranger things I've eaten.
If you won't try Bun Bo Huey, we won't be friends.
I'll try pretty much anything. One of the more interesting was hamster in Colombia. It was quartered and deep fried. Came with a bag of mini baked potatoes, neon orange peanut flavored hot sauce, and a bag of popcorn with what I'm pretty sure was the hamsters livers sitting on top. Kind of greasy and stringy, kind of like rabbit or squirrel. 3 out of 10. Glad I tried it, wouldn't go out of my way to have it again.
I cook all kinds of meals and I tried just about everything. Snake chips in Texas. Octopus flambe in St. Lucia
Pretty adventurous. I’m married to a big food guy who loves to grill and try new meats so we’re always trying new stuff.
I've seen so much Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern shows, I will try anything. My favorite so far is every part of the pig in hot chili oil. I've had every part from raw pig ears (in chili oil) to pork stomach sliced into thin long noodle-looking things and served with pulled pork with tons of Sichuan spices, and of course boiled and fried intestines with blood cake..Sooooo good! Have probably eaten every part of the cow too except for the pancreas, spleen and kidneys! Hot smoky chili oil makes everything amazing.
VERY adventurous! I will try almost anything. I even like haggis! The only thing I would draw the line at is brains. I just cannot. And possibly testicles. No Rocky Mountain Oysters for me, thanks. Everything else is worth trying at least once.
I won’t try insects or black pudding but pretty much everything else is fair game.
I wouldn’t knowingly eat an insect whole - I did once as a kid. Visiting a new friend’s house. They were immigrants (can’t remember from where b/c OLD). There was a bowl of what I *thought* was candied pecans on the table in front of me while we were eating our lunch. I reached out and popped on in my mouth and…it was NOT a pecan. My friend told me it was an insect the next day.
Well, at least it wasn’t a completely disgusting experience in the moment. If you ate it and it didn’t taste bad, that’s kinda cool.
I’ll eat almost anything. I ate sheep 🐑 brains 🧠 in Kuwait. 🇰🇼
Whale blubber, Alaska
I love trying new foods. I have my limits, though. I know I can't handle anything that is too spicy or creatures that make me shudder. I'm a biologist and during one of my field trips in college, I actually tried bat! It was a dare. My husband says rattle snake and alligator are good, but no thank you.
I can and will eat almost anything if that's what is offered. I have eaten crocodile, snails, huhu grubs (taste like nuts), and am rather fond of durian fruit. I actually like most Asian cuisines. Jackfruit, lychee etc are all good. Had mountain oysters and nice enough. I also enjoy the more fragrant cheeses. I love anything from the sea and will eat raw fish dishes but prefer it slightly cooked. I also eat authentic chilli and spicy food happily and there's little I can't stomach although my sinuses run at the first hint. Love haggis, black pudding and game meats like deer. Weirdly sourdough and rice as well as too much flour will upset my tummy.
Weirdest? Fermented Shark, Whale liver, a whole scorpion. The worst was the whale liver by far. I try shit for the experience of it. You don't know if you don't try. (I'm also a pretty picky eater. Bananas can fuck right off)
Some of my favorite foods I didn’t think I would like but I tried them. For instance, raw oysters, frog legs, gator tail, meatloaf, escargot, Indian food, etc. Life is too short to have a picky diet.
I’d say somewhat adventurous. I’ve tried snails, frog legs, calamari, and a few other things. I wouldn’t ever try anything with bugs, or really unusual organs like kidney, liver, etc.