I love me some sushi…but I hated the sea urchin maki I tried a couple of years ago. It tasted searingly toxic, and not in a good way.
On a different note, I’m a big fan of salads, and always thought hearts of palm looked appetizing. Yuck. Just a big ol’ mouthful of blandness, with a displeasing texture to boot.
The braised kidneys didn’t sound good. They weren’t.
I recently had Ethiopian food. Cue obvious jokes. It wasn’t bad it was just pretty bland and uninteresting.
Interesting - there are a couple of Ethiopian dishes I find bland (gomen - kind of bland spinach, or the cabbage/carrot/cauliflower medley I get at a lot of places) but the majority of Ethiopian dishes are VERY spicy and delicious (since it is spiced with berbere which includes chili oil). Maybe order something else next time?
http://www.thequeensheba.com/menu3.htm (link to my favorite Ethiopian restaurant near Dallas, TX)
YATAKLETE ALITCHA - boring
SILSSI - divine!
I definitely think Ethiopian food is interesting - it comes communal style on a big, bread (injera) covered plate and you eat it with your fingers! I just don’t want anybody else to be scared away from a really fun dining experience. I love Ethiopian food!
I like the actual food when I have Ethiopian food, but I find the bread way too spongy for my tastes. Have I just had some bad injera experiences?
Bittermelon. Bitter-freaking-melon.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to make this palatable. Worse, any sauce used in a pathetic attempt at such instantly takes on the same tongue-numbing bitterness, as does any other foodstuff said sauce touches. I swear, I once had half an entree utterly ruined by bittermelon.
To me, nothing better illustrats the challenges in feeding over 1.1 billion people than that they’ll actually eat something like this.
I adore bitter-melon/gourd (i.e. karela). It’s classic Marathi food, and I expect classic in other areas of South India as well. I think you really have to be raised eating it to like it, I’ve never seen people convert to it easily. I’ve eaten it in two ways-first rubbed all over in haldi (turmeric), mirchi (cayenne, I think), salt and a little olive oil. Then dipped in rice flour and pan-fried. We usually serve this along with rice and daal. The other way was chopped into little bits and made into a dry vegetable sautee, known generally as “bhaji” or “sabji.”
I know that in other parts of India, like Andhra, they make a bhaji where it’s stuffed with a masala mix, much the same way my mother makes those stuffed baby Indian eggplants.
If you want a hideous bitter melon story-my father is at risk for type 2 diabetes (no, he’s not obese, he’s 5’7" and weights 123 lbs., it’s entirely genetic) and the common home remedy for reducing blood sugar is to JUICE bitter-melon and then mix the noxious brew with salt and mirchi and drink. My father started on this concoction when his blood sugar levels rose to the “high” end of normal and he claims that they’ve dropped completely back down to normal since then. I pointed out that it might be the damn 30 minutes of walking he panickily got into doing when he started the slide towards Type II but he insists it’s the Power of Bittermelon.
What’s that milky-white salty beverage served in middle-eastern restaurants? Last time I was in on one, I asked what it was, decided it sounded pretty bad but tried it anyway. I didn’t like it.
Sea Cucumber. Do not under any circumstances eat this. The best way I can think of to describe it is stale salty jello with lots of dog fur mixed in. I was so traumatized by the texture alone, I can barely remember how it actually tasted.
Oh, the perplexing ‘spit or swallow’ dilemma.
Har! I ordered that-it arrived in a fancy glass with a silver holder/handle thing, all dewy on the outside. It looked totally refreshing. I took a big gulp and…WTF?! Is this ranch dressing?! (gag) (gag) (gag)
What Ethiopian place are you eating at? My favorite place is very well spiced and the food has all sorts of wonderful and intense flavors you won’t find anywhere else. Even the bread alone should taste wonderfully sour. They make a cold veggie dish that has a beautiful horseradish taste to it…exquisite!
I gotta second salty milk drinks. Blech!!!
I found it quite reasonable, not great by any means but hardly disgusting. Jellyfish is similarly not nearly as bad as it might seem.
Tripe though does live up to its name. pointless, unappertising, and bad for you (high colesterol).
Two words: “Fish paste.”
It was the fishiest substance I had ever tasted, and it stuck to your tongue (and everything else) more readily than peanut butter. Served with perfectly good vegetables that should under no circumstances be dipped into it.
I think it was a Malaysian restaurant.
Is the salty drink the same as the salty indian lassi which is generally buttermilk + black sulphur salt? If so, I find that stuff delectable. In fact, it’s usually what I have for breakfast.
One food I recently read even sven referencing (with great distaste) in her India blog was pani puri. Positively ambrosial street/junk food. I can’t believe you hated it sven :).
I think sometimes you just really have to be raised eating certain things. I recoil at things like mac 'n cheese, almost all casseroles and any organ meat but I have no problem eating slice after slice of of bitter gourd.
scr4:
Oh! You reminded me of another one. When I was living in New York a few summers ago, my friends and I tried a little Tibetan place on, mm, 29th and 3rd. The food was great. The Tibetan butter tea? Not so great. Bleargh. Tasted like a salty, buttery milkshake.
I’ve been intrigued by salty lassi on menus, but I’ve always stuck with mango lassi in the past. Now I’ll definitely give the salty lassi a shot!
Yes. I came into this thread to post about tripe.
Imagine a very pale GoodYear™ tire turned into a net with little holes in it.
Compared to tripe, raw eggplant is tasty and nice and tender.
Ever had a bad restaurant steak where a section of the meat was all interspersed with gristle? And if you were leery of spitting it out into your napkin and tried to chew it to a swallowable tenderness, remember how the meat scraps and meat taste would disappear and leave only the rubbery gristle? Tripe is where you start off at that point.
I went to an African restaurant with a friend who’d just returned from two weeks in Ghana. She ordered this common dish - I can’t remember the name of it, but it was very doughy and pale. It comes in the huge blob that you tear chunks off and dip them in the accompanying sauce. It is not visually appealing, and my taste buds weren’t happy with the taste and texture either. Very bland and it looked a lot like the fat that rises to the top of your gravy container after Thanksgiving dinner.
The name of the dish is FuFu, if anyone’s interested.