Bizarre Foods
 

Flipping through the channels to see what was on TV, I came across a new show Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel. I’ve seen the commercials, but this is the first time I actually had a chance to watch it. I see the host eating bat, whereas I’m eating my dinner of angel hair pasta, (something that could be considered normal.) Normality is a question of semantics anyway. Strange and should I say unique foods have been one of the main attractions of a few shows I can think of… and what comes to mind is not just Fear Factor, but legitimate food. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve eaten? Or to say, not necessarily weird, but interesting.

We have the plain old run of the mill "strange" food here. Raw horse (basashi), raw chicken, including organs (torizashi), live squid sashimi, as well as other seafood served "on the hoof" so to speak- yeah, it's still moving when you tuck in. Organs are really popular in this part of Japan, kind of like the South where you use everything but the "oink". It's strange by American standards, but totally normal here.

there are a few odd foods here as well, though by chinese standard, the food is pretty tame. it is the northern chinese that eat the really crazy food.

the oddest local food is pig organs and that isn't all that odd. a short trip to malaysia and you can visit markets with insects piled high like a north american fruit market.

then again, if some the westerners i know are to counted as average, they would consider most of the food here to be off the menu just because it's a bit spicy or a bit different from 'good ole meat and two veg'.

Does cheese that you squeeze out of a tube count as "interesting"?

Funny you mention that. I think there are a lot of "Frankenfoods" that we eat in the west, that in no way resemble any natural food product, and should be considered far more bizarre than some of the animals and animal products that are eaten elsewhere.
Most of the worlds people would not call that stuff in a tube "cheese". In Italy or France they would be totally repulsed.

Although I've never eaten any of the following....

My mom grew up on a farm in the South. They did not believe in wasting food, so chitlins (pig intestines), hash (leftover bits of anything mixed together) and chicken feet were not an uncommon dinner. When I worked in a grocery store the South, we sold canned pig brains with gravy, and plenty of people bought pigs feet and tripe.

I used to have a picture of my father eating grasshoppers. I think it was more of a dare than an "I'm hungry" thing.

Oh yeah, pickled pigs feet is HUGE in some parts of the deep south. As are brains. There's actually a dish - scrambled eggs and squirrel brains. None for me thanks ;)

Strangest food I've ever eaten. . . Well there was the atomic chicken at some chicken joint in Pennsylvania that we went to when we were working on a story. Chicken isn't weird, but it is somewhat strange when it's so hot that you have to sign a waiver before you eat it ;) It was hot. I don't mean sorta hot, I mean holy shit call the fire department this is damn HOT.

I did a story once on survivalist training. We actually signed up for this group and then reported on our experiences. Part of that was eating grubs. Fortunately they were fried. They were actually tasty, and maybe it's stupid and immature that I won't ever be doing that again, but as long as there's steak readily available from the grocery store, I'll pass on the grubs thank you.

The weirdest "normal" food I've eaten would probably be posole. If you ever get the chance to try this stuff, it's awesome. It's a hispanic soup/stew. Ate it at some restaurant in New Mexico. Had hominy, shredded pork, and chili powder in the soup, and was then topped with lettuce, cream cheese, sliced radishes, avocado, and a bunch of other stuff. Kinda like a salad floating on the soup. WEIRD looking, WEIRD sounding, but some of the tastiest stuff I've ever eaten.

I don't think you can even buy that here in Canada. And I am very thankful.

i think we used to be able to buy it in canada but it just never really caught on.

i agree, there are plenty of precessed foods that are just foul: for me, sunny d is one of the foulest drinks imaginable. way too sweat and the mouth feel is all vegetable oil (the use it as an emulsifier).

nasty

But in Scandanavia (and Nancy can back me up on this) they sell caviar in a tube and it's apparently the greatest thing.

I went to a wedding where the bride was Vietnamese. The dinner was a 9 course meal, and was fantastic. Apparently I ate several things I never would have otherwise ever tried. I think 2 of the more adventerous were jellyfish and pigeon. I'm sure there were other oddball things, but it was a long time ago.

I really admire the host of that show, Bizzare Foods. I'd love to have dinner with the guy and just talk about all the things/food he has encountered.

It's not the tube
 

So long as it's actual food, the tube part doesn't bother me.
It's the stuff that's sold in the States and is supposedly food but actually comes out of a chemical processing plant that's the problem.

I always thought it was funny that Velveeta (and any other "American cheese" product) is cleary labelled as "Processed American cheese food". I mean, really, you have to label it as food? Is that to distinguish it from processed American cheese pesticide, or maybe processed American cheese motor oil? We may have strange food here, but at least it's REAL food! Some things you don't miss!

That's true - I eat it allmost daily, but it's smoked codd caviar - no beluga type caviar should come in a tube :)

Strange Norwegian food must be graved salomon (half-rotten fish), lutefisk (lye + codd)
and smalahove http://photos5.flickr.com/10638530_345980f996_m.jpg
- It's a burned sheep's scull. I've never tasted it but the eyes are supposed to be the best part.....:oogle:

I hope Abaya chimes in after sampling some Icelandic treats (Rotten shark and such....)

I love lutefisk. I have very fond memories of big lutefisk feeds when I was a kid. My dad's Lions Club put them on, and senior citizens of Scandanavian descent came by the busload full from Ballard to get it. Yes, it's an odd food. Yes, it takes some getting used to. Yes, it's more like eating fish jello. But I still think it's yummy, and people still think I'm weird. I think it's a good tradeoff.

As for the show Bizarre Foods--I'll probably watch it again next Monday. It's a good lead-in to Anthony Bourdain at 10pm, though I was disappointed that this week's No Reservations was one I'd already seen several times, being that it was all about the Pacific Northwest. That balut on Bizarre Foods looked interesting.

Has anyone here ever had a balut? Do they really eat it as much as the show said Filipinos do? I'm curious.

did you have the frog spit yet?

I’ve had ostrich a bunch of times.

Posole is delicious! I'm sad that I moved so far away from New Mexico now. Chili, mmm. The food in D.C. just tastes bland after growing up in NM. New Mexican is so far from real Mexican food, it's crazy. New Mexican food is definitely unique, but delicious!

That posole sounds very different than true posole though. It sounds like an Anglocised (read: white) version made for tourists in Santa Fe. Still, with posole, pork, and chili in it, how could you go wrong?

sorry if this was a threadjack.:thumbsup:

As well as lobster paste and shrimp paste. It comes in a toothpaste tube. It was the first thing I thought of. That and the god-awful jalapeno-salt-licorice candies.
Recently, when the sucker-thing got stuck to my tongue, I realized that taking a dare to eat octopus sushi again just wasn't worth it. Scotch eggs are a little weird. Who wraps a hard-boiled egg in sausage and deep fries it? Man, it was good. The two bites I allowed myself.

The scottish love to deep fry anything...


And no... I haven't tried the frog spit yet. But I've had the frog's legs and they were tasty!

Two words for you. Carne adovada (from La Hacienda in Albuquerque ;) )

well you have to realize that there are about a jillion different recipes for posole. The restaurants near santa fe actually tend to make the posole without chili powder (a real good example is El Paragua in Espanola, which has some of the best food anywhere on the planet, hands down), while the Albuquerque restaurants always include it.

Since that first time described above I've eaten posole in i-don't-know-how-many restaurants in New Mexico (More often than not I take my vacation there, and plan on retiring there eventually as well) and it's never the same from place to place. The only thing that stays the same is that it's always good ;)



Oh and you have some good food options there in your area too. Pop down to Williamsburg and try Raliegh or Mitchie Tavern, and especially Christiana Campbell's (get the spoon bread - phenomenal). Closer to home is 220 in Winchester (seafood - REALLY good, and quite reasonable prices considering the mountain of food they give you). One advantage to my line of work is that I've been to, and eaten in, tons of places around the country. This is not, however, an advantage for my waistline ;)

My favorite food of all time. Losbetos in Albuquerque was my favorite place to grab a quick carne adovada burrito. Too bad it's closed now.

I know what you mean, I guess I just can't appreciate the posole many restaurants make, since my grandma makes the best posole ever. ;)

Thanks for the tips I will try to find my way to these places before I move back to Albuquerque for med school in a few months.

I think I have you all beat.....I've had this stuff on a dare.

www.spam.com:eek: :eek:

If you seen the Bizzarre foods about the Philippines, I have eaten about half of that. I enjoy about 1/4 of it. Still have to try Balut though, family warned us about only eating balut(and dinuguan) if you knew it was fresh/where it came from.

MMM...Durian. I especially love the homemade Durian icecream they sell in the filipino icecream store.

Got a recipe for czarnina before my great grandma died. I have eaten a nice amount of "weird" polish food also. I like the blood sausages.

mmmmm. Blood sausage. My dad would bring it home for supper and my mom would leave the house. So it was dad,sis,bro, and me to enjoy it.