I suppose part of the problem is people do grow up and develop different tastes. I hated peas and potatoes when I was a kid. Love 'em now.
I got sick from maraschino cherries when I was a kid, and still don’t like them, though I can eat one if I have to. I got sick on Jack Daniel’s when I was in high school, and to this day it makes me want to retch if I so much as smell it.
Poor me. Not, “society just doesn’t understand!”
I wonder why waiters are so confused and/or surprised when I ask if my dish has cilantro in it, and if yes to please leave it off. More often than not, they assure me it doesn’t and lo and behold, it does. It’s like they don’t think I’ll notice or something :(:mad:
And why is it on EVERYTHING now if it’s such a common dislike? At a lot of places it’s pre-mixed into the meats/beans/rice/bread/sauces/soups/etc, so you cannot order them without. Fucking Taco Bell started putting it in all their items. I ordered french fries at a pub awhile back - a local brewery that has NOTHING to do with asian or Latin American food - and I thought they were covered in parsely. Cilantro!
I cannot wait until this fad passes and covering everything in cilantro is seen as a sign of a bad cook just as much as covering everything in ketchup would be today.
It’s got to be a localized thing. I CANNOT get cilantro on anything here. Can’t get chili verde. Can’t get much of any flavor.
Guess that’s Colorado for you. Black pepper is risky.
I think it’s a fad from LA that has spread over here like everything else from that town. Evidenced by the Futurama episode where Fry thinks he went further into the future . . .
Fry: So you’re saying these aren’t the decaying ruins of New York in the year 4000?
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: You wish. You’re in Los Angeles.
Fry: But there was this gang of ten-year-olds with guns.
Leela: Exactly. You’re in L.A.
Fry: But everyone is driving around in cars shooting at each other.
Bender: That’s L.A. for you.
Fry: But the air is green and there’s no sign of civilization whatsoever.
Bender: He just won’t stop with the social commentary.
Fry: And the people are all phonies. No one reads. Everything has cilantro on it…
Fucking cilantro.
And what’s with the teeth-sticking thing? There’s something sinister about that, too. It isn’t satisfied to just ruin the taste of things, it has to actually interfere with my eating.
I’m the same way. Cilantro tastes like pure, concentrated evil. It doesn’t taste like soap to me, but it triggers an immediate “this is not food. This is not for consumption” instinct. I can also taste and smell it in minute amounts.
Now, a nightmare for those of you in my camp: I was recently at a formal banquet in China, where everything was much more formal and everyone was watching me eat. I put a meatball in my mouth… and it was full of cilantro. I told myself to just chew and swallow, but my mouth would not cooperate. There were no napkins. After a few seconds of terrified stillness, I went to the bathroom and spat it up in the toilet. I felt awful.
You couldn’t force down a bar of soap if you had to? I think I could.
My mom made me brush my teeth with soap one time. I can’t remember why, but I must have taken the lord’s name in vain one too many times or something.
Little did she know she was making me a cilantro lover. 
Yeah, I’m not 100% on board with the soap thing, though I understand where that description comes from. This is more like how it tastes to me. I would honestly be more comfortable eating equal amounts of soap.
I actually wondered, before it happened, how I would react if I had to eat cilantro. I said I wasn’t sure, but it turns out, I couldn’t do it. Trust me, if I could have, I would have.
Are you living in a small town? 'cause Denver’s full of ethnic restaurants that bring the flavor.
And the cilantro.
Yeah, Denver is like a real city.
The area I live in, you go to a Chinese restaurant and order the spicy selection and then order it “extra spicy” and it still tastes like water. You have to order from Domino’s Pizza to get something that actually tastes like something. Or, just go to the grocery store and buy flavor.
Ouch. Pity, that. I hope you’re able to get to a real-ish city sometime soon to enjoy flava.
/end hijack
My local grocery store thanks you all. In the interests of experimentation, since I have no awareness of any kind of evilness in the flavor of cilantro, I purchased a small bunch on the way home.
(nibble)
Yea…no soap. Just flavor I describe as “bright green.”
There, my first real-life behavior influenced by the Dope. Where will it end?
Hopefully not canine analingus. Stay out of the archives :).
I shudder to think. I’ve been exposed to quite enough Dope shenanigans just by lurking (something about pan-fried semen?). I don’t have a large enough supply of brain bleach just now.