No, not Harvey Fierstein, the East Asian fruit known as Durain. For starters, that link proves taste is relative - but reinforces my feeling the NYT is not the paper of record.
It’s very exotic looking, if you like food that resembles a submarine mine. Its smell is identical to cat shit. It’s is the only food that smells worse than (what Chinese call) stinky (fermented) tofu.
If you’re really into trying exotic foods, you can usually find it at produce stands in Chinatown. Or if you’re in the orient, you can save the money and queue up with other local ‘Durian scavengers’ who wait near cafe tables frequented by unsuspecting tourists ordering the fruit, say ‘Ewww’ and push the plate away. A simple, ‘if you’re not going to eat that, would you mind giving it to me?’ request has a near 100% success rate in scoring free durian.
I hope saying it many times fast will somehow expel it from my tastebud memory, propelling it from my lips and out of my body forever and ever and ever. Just thinking about it… shudder
Hideous. Hideous. Lutefisk.
Locally I’ve found every Ethiopian place I’ve tried ( at least four ) to have slightly different iterations of injera, from soft and spongy to somewhat denser and chewier. However unlike you I prefer mine soft and spongy :).
Love Ethiopian food. And it does run the gamut from ( mildly ) spicy to quite bland.
As for stuff I had a horrible reaction too - I am NOT a fan of sushi, but can choke some of it down. However a co-worker once inveigled me into trying his kippered herring packed in sour cream. I should have known better. Completely and utterly repulsive.
I think anu-la1979 has it right. I was raised with menudo, so tripe’s the ultimate comfort food for me. Durian, however, tasted like sour garlic custard.
However, the scariest food I personally ever tried was a fishball soup in a Korean restaurant. I’m a pretty adventurous eater, but these things were like having an eyeball in your mouth. You had to chow down pretty hard to get into the meat, and the insides would come squirting out. I’d imagine someone growing up with Korean cuisine would have liked it just fine, but for me? Grossgrossgrossgrossgross…
I think people who say “oh, it’s an acquired taste” tend to be snobs, but in the case of Durian, it is an acquired taste. Well, at least for me it was. I didn’t like it the first few times, and I would have given up on it after the first time, if the Vietnamese didn’t think of it as a bit of a delicacy, and my ex-wife was Vietnamese, so I was onlibged to eat durian at social gatherings.
I absolutely love the stuff. It is exquisite. I’m not so sure about durian-flavoured things, though. But fresh durian itself is marvellous.
Pickled salmon. I think it was pickled salmon, it was something pickled.
It was a food sample in a store. I was just a little kid. I took a bite, freaked out, ran away to the other side of the store where they sold pop going ‘ewwww!’. My dad had to run after me.
When I was in London, I tried haggis. I had to literally force myself to swallow one piece, then threw out the rest. I even tried vegetarian haggis (made from oatmeal), which tastes just as bad as the real thing.
On another occasion, I saw limburger cheese in a local supermarket. I figured, “How bad can it be? They make it and sell it and people buy it and eat it.” When I got it home, I opened the wrapper and took a whiff, and all I could think of was very concentrated cat piss. So I figured, “It can’t possibly taste as bad as it smells.” I was wrong.
Other than these two, I’ve never encountered a food I didn’t like, if made properly.
I third Durian. I thought it was supposed to be a kind of trick, you know, smells bad but tastes really good. In reality no surprises. Tastes just like you would expect after smelling it. Awful. I felt queasy for hours after a bite.
I tried to psych myself up to like dinuguan (Filipino pork blood stew), but I knew even before trying it that I was probably going to dislike it. It didn’t help that my friend who made it invariable introduced to people with “Don’t ask what’s in it, just try it!”
**Rysdad’s ** got it right, and I think Mark DeCarlo was just trying to be nice. Plus, throw in the feeling of swallowing a tiny cactus. These prickly needles lodge themselves in many fun places, making the flavour impossible to escape. Ever.
It will be in your nightmares for the rest of your life.
Salt lassi (I’ve also seen it as “doog” in a Lebanese restaurant) is great, but it does take some acclimation and has to be served with the right food, i.e. something fairly spicy or sour. The stuff in most restaurants is okay, but when I make it at home I throw in some chopped mint leaves, sea salt, lemon juice, and occasionally some cumin along with the yoghurt. (It has the body but not quite the same rich taste as buttermilk; it is, however, much healthier.) It’s like a spicy milkshake, and it’s great with some roast lamb or saag paneer.
Buttermilk is actually pretty healthy…it only has something like 1% milkfat. I know it’s only something like a 110 calories per cup, which is equivalent to low-fat yoghurt.
