Drinks, food, candy, whatever. You put it in your mouth for the express purpose of ingesting it. What was it? How did it taste?
For me, it was some random Indian appetizer. It was a little anice seeded cracker type of thing that my friend assured me was edible. You see, he was eating them too. I took a bite and I thougth to myself that it wasn’t too bad. So I started munching away on them. He suggested I add the relish that was there to it as well. Since he was eating it also, I saw no problem. I tasted it on its own and it was a little salty but not too bad. I think it was some type of mango pickle thing but I don’t know for sure. I put it on the little cracker thing and took a bite of it and I thought my eyes were going to explode. I started gagging and had to run to the bathroom.
You see, this relish when mixed with the anice cracker had some type of insidious chemical reaction going. If rancid urine tastes like how it smells this would be a very close approximation. Not only that, it had this gelatinous texture to it when combined with the visualization of pee that made it that much more unappetizing.
Meanwhile, after throwing up all of my insides, said friend was laughing his ass off at me. I will get him back someday. I have visions of him eating lutefisk (well, I couldn’t eat that either), menudo (yum!), or a bowl of Pho with tripe and all sorts of other gross bits in it.
Except Korean. I visited a Korean restaurant only once and I will now attempt to relate just a few of the horrors visited upon me during that meal.
Little tiny dried fish. With eyes and everything. As an appetizer (which I didn’t order, they bring it out for free when you sit down. It’s like chips at a Mexican place or bread at an Italian place). I was feeling adventurous, and thought maybe they’d be good. They weren’t.
A slice of white, flavorless, gelatinous… stuff. It seriously looked and felt like Jell-O, except without the taste.
Kimchi. I understand that lots of people love kimchi, but to me it tasted like what was left in the drain after someone washed the dishes.
I’m open-minded, food-wise, but I haven’t yet given Korean food another chance. Maybe I will someday.
I chose to eat Rocky Mountain oysters which is pretty disturbing, more for the thought of what they are rather than what they taste like.
We once talked an unsuspecting friend into trying a piece of brand new blueberry bubble gum. We extolled the virtues of taste, how resilient it was, and how cheap it was. Unknowing friend pops it in his mouth, bites down, and then finally realizes it was actually a blue paintball pellet.
Squid with peas. Heavy on the soy sauce. It was utterly disgusting. Squid is a fine and edible food. Squid with canned peas (the only vegetable left in my pantry at the time) is wretched. Trust me. We were so tired and starving that we ate it.
Rotted clotted cream. It was on an airplane, which made the experience even worse. You see, there was a kind of greenish tinge to it, which, since I’d never eaten clotted cream before, I didn’t know wasn’t supposed to be there. Later on, to quote P.J. O’Rourke, “My insides were pulled out on a rope of filth.”
Ten live goldfish, and the water they were swimming in. Someone thought it would be a good “extreme-type social activity” for the late eighties. Everyone was being so wishy-washy about downing them, and I got fed up, grabbed the big jar, and gulped them down whole and swimming.
I ate lutefisk and didn’t think it was so bad. Kind of like egg whites dipped in kerosene.
Huh. Come to think of it, the only food I’ve ever eaten that comes to mind at the thread title’s prompt was the chocolate syrup sandwich I ate on a dare at a teenage slumber party - and that was only gross because of the brown glop squirting out of all sides of the sandwich.
I was snorkeling in Greece, and one of my Greek friends pulled a huge spiny urchin from the rocky sea-bottom. He cracked the hard shell open on a rock until a pale gray, gummy mass was revealed. (It looked rather like a smooth brain.)
Then, he handed me a spoon…
One bite of the bitter, salty stuff was enough for me, but he proceeded to eat all the yucky gray innards of that urchin, then dove for another.
I once took a big swig of apple juice from one of those little cans. Turns out the can had rusted from being in the cooler when we were on vacation. I was basically drinking orange juice-flavored rust.
Eewinsert puking smiley here
I think I can safely say the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten was a pancake prepared with a huge glob of MUSTARD in the batter with blueberry sauce, chocolate chips and hot fudge on top for a teenage dare contest at a church lock-in.
IDBB
Vegetable cake. I don’t know if that’s what it’s called, but it was like a fruit cake, only made with vegetables, slimier, and covered in aspic.
The particularly terrible thing was that it was served at a business meeting in a foreign country where I was representing my boss at the last minute because she was stranded at an airport somewhere. My only instructions were “DO NOT screw this up.” The person I was meeting with insisted on ordering his favorite meal, a local specialty, for both of us.
It was all awful, but choking down this cake was really the worst. I would take a tiny little sliver on my fork and slowly bring it to my mouth, trying not to focus on the tiny tendrils of aspic quivering in the breeze. I’m gagging just remembering it.
Two things, both in a Japanese restaurant. Don’t get me wrong, I love Japanese food, but the first was some unknown green slime. Very little taste, but a nasty, nasty texture. I’m also not too fond of nato - fermented soy beans.
And then there was my rice surprise. It actually wasn’t so gross when I ate it, but after the fact it was a bit disturbing.
I cooked 1/2 a package of rice. Everything was fine until I was cleaning up after dinner. I was putting the rice away and thought I saw something moving in the bag. Yep, there they where, little white worms or some kind of larvae squirming around in the rice. They didn’t change the taste, but the idea put me off a bit.
My mom used to drink cans of Pepsi when I was growing up, and I’d occasionally sneak up and steal a swig. My mom also smoked alot (I’m sure you can see where this is going). One day I go to take a swig of Pepsi, only to find that she’d been using the can as an ashtray - so I get a mouthful of ashy Pepsi. It was over 20 years ago, and even as I’m writing this I can almost taste it again. Yuck!
Since that doesn’t really count as a food, I guess the runner up would be some squid crackers a co-worker brought back from Japan. I tried one before I saw the package they came out of - bleah. When my sister brought some home from her trip to Japan, I was the only one smart enough not to have any - forewarned is forearmed.
