Curry is a big problem for me. It might be okay if they only put 1/100th of the usual amount on a dish. But at regular strength it tastes like I’m getting a bucketful of spices in each bite. Just waaaay too much.
In addition, I can’t then taste the food in the dish at all. It’s completely overwhelmed. I don’t see the point of that since we are hopefully past the age of trying to cover up the taste of rotted food.
Ordering reduced curry does nothing. They only cut back a tiny fraction. I have to go completely curry-free.
I have wondered if the soapy-cilantro gene is dominant and so maybe can be expressed weakly if only one is present. Once in a while, especially in salsa where the cilantro is more-or-less raw, I’ll get a weak soapy taste. Not enough to make me spit it out (In fact I kinda like it.) but I certainly get enough to sense what people are talking about.
I’m surprised to only see one brief mention of Stevia here. For me, ANY artificial sweetener tastes like an chemical infusion of fake sweetness, which in fact it is, with a heavy emphasis on chemical. Soda, juice, candy, virtually anything that says “light” or “sugar-free”, tastes vile and vaguely poisonous to me. And believe me, I’ve tried all of the Zero varieties, whether Coke or Vitamin Water or whatever. One taste and I’m done. I’d rather take cough syrup.
‘Americanized’ Mexican food, can be very bland if you eat at the wrong restaurants. Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex is certainly not bland. It will also vary by the part of the country you are in (cooking in general, in the midwest, seems to be far more bland. Hell, Cal-Mex, at least way back when I was in College, was far more spicy than the mexican food I ever got in Mexico. Not that the restaurants in Mexico were bland, but they simply don’t go as overboard with the spice as they do in California.
Heck, there’s an infamous all-night burger chain in Southern California (least it was around back in the early '80s), called “Tommy’s”. If you asked for a burger, no specification of what to put on it, you’d get it with chilli and jalapenos every time, and it would keep you up all night with indigestion. New Orleans, and much of Florida can be like that as well (Well, I haven’t been to either place recently – this is from memory).
My brother took me out to a Mexican restaurant a few months ago and he wanted to try a new one, instead of the great one (with mariachis, and great food) that we used to go to all the time, and it was horribly bland.
You can’t really generalize like that – not all mexican food is bland.
Tortas Mexico. Run by, and basically to serve Mexican folks.
They serve hot sauce in a bottle on the side.
I do like ‘real’ tacos, shredded beef, the (by some) dreaded cilantro, chopped onions on the side and the bottles of pepper sauce, red and green.
Not much flavour? I’m surprised. To me, celery has an overwhelmingly strong, unpleasant taste that I can only describe as “brown”. Kind of like a very pungent, nasty spice.
I had a thread a few years ago about how I find cucumbers and melons overpoweringly bitter and disgusting. A few people agreed with me, but the vast majority said that they were almost flavorless. Since then however, I’ve discovered that I love butternut squash, so I wonder if cooking kills whatever chemical causes the bitter taste?
To Leopold Bloom, at least, according to Joyce, semen smelled like celery sauce. To round off this celery association, Molly remembers her afternoon:…I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth if nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so clean and white he looks with his boyish face I would too in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went down what its only like gruel or the dew…
But we are far from cilantro now.
ETA: Kiyoshu, if it’s not too much to ask, do you think semen smells like celery? Lightning also. Me, I’ve thought about it, and can see (smell) the connection.
I’m really quite curious about the kind of mushrooms you’ve eaten. The reason is twofold. First, to most people mushrooms don’t have much flavor at all. They’re quite mild, and tend to soak up liquids which is one reason they absorb flavor. That said, mushrooms have quite different flavors (although again, mostly mild). The common white mushroom is really very different from the morel, and very different indeed from the truffle. Do these all taste the same to you?
Obviously some sort of difference in taste receptors - I feel the same about saccharin and the “purely chemical” sweeteners, can tolerate Sucralose, since it is in fact sucrose modified to make it inassimilable, and have no problem with stevia. Although with the case of the concentrated taste mentioned earlier there is a “not-quite-right” element to the taste - not unpleasant, but sort of a gustatory “uncanny valley.”
And it can vary with the use. I and others convinced a maker of high quality ginger ale to put out a version with stevia. The sugar version is great, other stevia sweetened sodas by the same maker are great, but the ginger ale was nasty. There must have been some interaction between the flavor elements from the ginger and the stevia, because it was not palatable.
It sounds like you’re objecting to the overall intensity of the spicing, which is indeed strong and complex. It seems that most people who don’t like curry are actually objecting to cumin, which is a major ingredient in curries. For some, cumin smells like BO and tastes sour.
I love onions, but I have have an odd aversion to garlic. Even the smell of garlic bread baking makes me gag. It’s like garlic isn’t even a food. It’s more like a chemical smell.
I have the cilantro/soap effect as well. On the other hand, I love the Brussels sprouts. They taste pleasant to me.
Cumin is fine- however, I have recently discovered that I do, in fact, like avocado. I had assumed that guacamole tasted so awful because of the avocado, but it turns out it’s the cilantro in it that makes it vile.
How has no one mentioned beets yet? Most people find that beets have a pleasant sweet vegetable flavor, but to some of us, they just taste like dirt (I’m in the “taste like dirt” population).