I agree with you about fugu. I was really excited about trying it, only to be totally underwhelmed.
I disagree with you about abalone (which we call paua over here) though. It’s got a great taste, although the texture is pretty unusual though. Cut into thin strips and lightly fried in garlic and butter is mjy favourite way to have it.
“Gourmet” Hamburgers (Five Guys, Red Robin, Fuddruckers, Wahlburgers, etc.): just a burger…McDonald’s black angus is better and cheaper
“Bum” Wines (MD-20/20, Bali Hai, etc.): sweet and nasty…also nice going down/awful coming up
Filet Mignon: about as tasty as bloody mucous
Abalone: rubbery and tasteless, like eating inner tubes
Fruit flans are a completely different thing - they’re a fruit tart. Mexican flans are the equivalent of French creme caramel.
Escargot is proof that if you put enough butter on garlic on something, even slugs taste okay.
That name irks me. Risotto is just one of the Italian words that mean “rice”, but for some unfathomable reason unlinked to any risotto I had in Italy (they were always dry) or to the way the word is used there, it has come to mean “watery rice”. Every time I hear someone talk about the riss-so-ott-ttto they had for lunch, I want to stick a 24-people pan of risotto giallo* down their throats…
Oh, another lobster/sushi non-fan! Do you realize we’re the minority?
Except for shrimp and scallops, I’ve never taken to seafood. Even something as mildly benign as fish sticks or tilapia makes me shudder. As a kid I wouldn’t touch a tuna sandwich with a ten-foot pole. I still won’t.
My BIL convinced me to try grilled swordfish last summer. I liked it, but didn’t like it enough to say, order it in a restaurant. BIL said no doubt my dislike stems from texture. Most seafood haters, in his opinion, will go for swordfish because it’s “meatier” than most fish.
I don’t get sushi love at all. It just goes over my head and out the window. As for lobsters, I’d still rather see them skittering on the ocean floor than jammed in a tank 
I tried it once. It wasn’t bad, but nothing to build a tradition around. But I had it at the ferry terminal at Tsawwassen, so I should have it again somewhere else.
Yep. In SoCal, everyone loves flan after Mexican food. The custard was… well, it was custard. So what? I’ve heard that it’s supposed to have a crust on the bottom. I’ve never seen it; or else, it was so soggy as to be indistinguishable from the custard. And the sauce tasted like thin honey. (Actually caramel, but that’s how it tastes to me.) Nothing wrong with honey, but I like it in tea or in a hot drink made with apple cider vinegar or maybe on biscuits. Not so much in a dessert. (This is why I rarely eat baklava.)
About lobster: I love lobster. But you have to go somewhere that knows how to cook it. There was a Mexican place in Lancaster (CA) that did it well. I don’t know what they did to it, but it was delicious. A couple of other higher-end (relatively speaking) restaurants have done it well. My mom and her then-boyfriend brought some lobsters back from Punta Final, Baja California. (He had a Mooney, and they flew down.) She cooked those on the barbie. I wish I knew exactly how she did it, because they were great! The last few times I’ve had lobster in a restaurant they were overcooked and bland.
I also prefer Pacific spiny lobster (like the ones from Baja) to Maine lobsters. No fussing with claws; just a nice, succulent tail. They seem ‘sweeter’ to me. You never see those live, and the ones at the fishmongers at Pike Place (and everywhere else that has them) are frozen and brought in from Australia. At $30/pound I haven’t tried them, since I don’t know how to cook them exactly right.
Risotto shouldn’t be watery, but it’s usually not dry, either. It’s creamy. Here’s the Italian Wikipedia page on it. None of those risottos there are what I would characterize as “dry.”
Risotto is one of those things that pisses me off on the menus, too, because it is so very often massacred and used to mean “any ol’ dish with rice in it.” When something is listed as “risotto milanesa” (let’s be specific here), I expect a creamy dish with saffron and a cheese like Parmigiano-Reggiano. I do not expect to be served something that looks like dry, boiled rice with saffron.
Add me to the lobster bandwagon. Admittedly I’ve only tried it a couple of times, once steamed and once grilled, but both times it was a letdown after all the hype. I’ve had much more blissful experiences with crab.
Thought I liked every kind of cheese, but the first time I put a wad of brie into my mouth I almost choked. The flavor/consistency combination was extremely unappealing in a visceral way I’d rather not describe.
Before visiting Salvador, Brazil I had read about and was looking forward to eating acarajé. I don’t know if “disappoint” is the right word, but I was unprepared for how unbelievably heavy one of those things is; I made it less than halfway through and couldn’t continue. (Probably wise, as they apparently have about a week’s worth of calories and fat.) Didn’t try any after that, and the smell of dendê oil boiling on every corner became a bit nauseating.
Maybe that’s the problem. Will try. (I posted my last from the previous page, without seeing this one.)
Abalone is great! You just have to pound the hell out of it. I’ve never had it as strips; only as steaks about 1/4" thick and 7" across. Mom got some with the lobsters from Punta Final. (The fishermen were very reluctant to sell her any, as all of their catch went to Japan – This was in the mid-'70s. Oh, and they did all of the pounding for her.) She put the nearly-dry abalone steaks in flour mixed with some salt for just a ‘dusting’ rather than a ‘coating’, and fried them in butter. This is the way it was cooked at a restaurant last time I had any. The texture was similar to correctly-cooked squid, and was not chewy or rubbery at all. Just delicious!
Mom told me of when she was a girl in Santa Ana. The grown-ups would say, ‘Let’s have abalone tonight!’ They’d go down to the beach and pry them off the rocks. Or they’d wade out and grab a few lobsters. Alas! By the time I came around, such things were no more, and lobsters and abalones were expensive treats!
Dude, you’re only supposed to use them to distract poorly conceived supervillains. No one expects you to actually eat the damned things.
I’m sad reading about all the lobster-haters. (I haven’t had lobster in years, maybe I should save up and treat myself now that I got the yearning.) It’s like being in a jewelry store and hearing, “I hate all these over-rated rubies, emeralds, and diamonds, give me a pair of little white gold hoop earrings.”
Campari soda. I first heard about it in college, and it seemed like the height of European sophistication. I was all prepared to make it “my drink.” What could be more mysterious and effortlessly cool than sipping a Campari soda at happy hour while everyone else is downing watery margaritas.?
BLECH. I have wide taste buds, and I simply cannot imagine how anyone on the planet can think it is good. I’m told it’s one of the top drinks in Italy, and I have no idea how that even works. It tastes like sparkly burnt tires.
I LOVE Campari, it is a great summer drink. I like it with soda and a piece of lime.
Yeah, Campari’s awesome, but you kinda have to like herbal stuff or bitters to appreciate it. I could see how some people would find it disgusting.
i like Campari soda, but IME many bars mix it too rich with too much Campari and not enough soda. Comes out bitter and syrupy.
I agree that lobster is underwhelming but for a different reason. I thought that it was going to be extremely gamey, because it looks pretty freakin gamey-tasting. Whereas of course, since it’s usually literally as fresh as possible, it’s completely ungamey and frankly pleasant-tasting.
What underwhelmed me about lobster is how little meat you get for all the effort of dismantling the corpse. I wouldn’t try lobster again if there were other tasty entrees on the menu unless it came pre-cracked for me.
That’s why I dislike blue crabs. I could work for ten hours and still be behind the hunger curve. One can never feel satisfied eating crabs. With lobster I find that I reach the satiation point if I have a 2-pounder or above. I won’t torture myself with a 1.25 pounder unless you provide a baked potato. 
Yeah, in my experience people either LOVE Campari or hate it. We’re in the love category Chez Athena, but I’ve given it to plenty of people to try, and I’d say about 60% hate it.
You are right about acaraje-it is unbelievably dense and filling. But a freshly made one, hot off the bubbling dende oil, with a cold beer-is great.
DO NOT ever take one home though-once they get cold, they are nauseating piles of grease (“dende” oil resembles paraffin wax when cold).