I’ve eaten uni a handful of times. Not a huge fan, but will eat it if served. The best was on a boat at one of the Greek islands and the chef dove into the Mediterannean and gathered fresh sea urchins and brought them up, cracked them open and we ate it out of the shell.
Sounds like a cool experience. My brother was on a boat in Hawaii where they caught a fish and immediately cut it up and had a sashimi meal. Can’t get fresher. I’ve caught a trout that I dressed and grilled immediately. Mmmm.
That’s exactly it. I can get 90% of the way to a steakhouse quality steak simply by buying prime steaks at the specialty butcher and paying attention when I cook them. Same with fish. I don’t feel like I get my money’s worth if I go order that same thing at a restaurant. That’s literally just cooking and something I can do myself if I’m feeling like a steak.
But someone who’s extensively trained in the culinary arts leaning into the creative and artistic side of it in terms of flavors, textures, and aromas, and the pairings between various foods? That’s something entirely different, and something I’m willing to pay for.
I had that problem with many tomato sauces and nearly all pasta, when I was a kid. It was texture with the pastas but it wasn’t texture for the sauces, for those it was taste and smell (though the smell wasn’t bad enough to set me off if I was only in the same room with the stuff; it had to get into my mouth to do that.) And, when and where I was a child, spaghetti with tomato sauce was the thing it was assumed all small children liked and would eat.
My mother was really good about telling a child who really couldn’t eat something from one who just wanted to get to dessert, and never tried to force me; with the result that I now actively like tomato sauces and can even eat some pastas. But I remember one incident at summer camp, when I took one sniff of the lasagna set in front of me and knew that there was no sense in my trying to eat it because it would have come back up all over the table. They told me I would have to sit there until I ate it. (Late 1950’s.) I figured they’d be at least as mad at me for the mess all over the table as for not eating, and I hated puking, so I sat there.
And sat there. And sat there. Eventually everybody left the table except me and one counselor, assigned to watch me. And I sat there. After quite a while of that, someone appeared and told me I could go and that in future, whenever they served that, I would have to sit at the heads’ table and eat a hamburger.
I liked the heads, and I liked hamburgers. I figured I had won that one. Years later, I realized that the “sit at the heads’ table” part was probably supposed to be a punishment.
It’s a very individual thing. I can give examples of spaghetti, okra, whatever that dessert thing was that my niece-in-law from China warned me I might not like and wow was she right; but obviously none of those things are textural problems for everybody.
Well, you mentioned the obvious one: okra. Lots of people don’t like the mucilaginous texture. Then there’s jellied meats or aspic. There’s the fat on a steak. Steak cooked rare. There’s mushrooms, raw oysters, raw tomatoes, yogurt, etc. Mind you, I like to love all that stuff, but I can see how that snotty texture turns off many people. And that’s just that side of the spectrum. There’s also stringy textures many hate, and I’m sure some folks don’t like crunchy, but gelatinous is the one I’m most familiar with.
I guess this tells us something. A lot of people are really not adventurous when it comes to food. They want middle of the road meh. They LIKE the meh. Nothing surprising and, honestly, it’s “ok.” As I mentioned above my sister’s family embraces it.
I am not saying everyone should be trying extreme menus like balut (don’t Google that…upsetting…not kidding) or insects and whatnot. But start with some ethnic chicken dishes (ethnic in this case being pretty much anything not North American).
I’m a pretty adventurous eater and can’t think of anything with a flavor that I find bothersome. I have some issues with gelatinous or rubbery textures, but I can eat enough of anything to be polite.
In all of my travels overseeing manufacturing in China, I found that if I ate with the workers, I always liked what I got. It might sometimes be very simple, but some sauced meat and vegetables on rice is hard to ruin. Maybe more spitting out of bones than I would prefer, but when in Rome…
I also always loved the food when I’d go out with my Chinese peers on a friendly basis. You know, when they’d take me the places they would go. Uniformly delicious.
The meals I found challenging were the meals where I was the honored guest dining with a number of factory bigwigs and local elites. That’s when dozens of completely unidentifiable dishes would appear. Things that when put in front of me would take about 5 minutes to stop jiggling.
At one of those meals, hosted by a younger, more female, more informal crew, I noticed that even they weren’t eating some of the things they ordered. They finally explained that there were a number of things on the menu that no one used to ‘modern’ food liked, but that were very expensive and time consuming to produce, and thus a major honor to serve. I put a spare plate over the top of a pot of particularly obnoxious soup that had sliced of congealed blood swimming in what I could only imagine was yak snot. They were quite relieved by my decisive action.
I (and two or three others) were well known with our colleagues in Taiwan for at least trying anything. They loved hosting us because they didn’t have to fret over finding a hamburger place or whatever and had no problem if we didn’t like something here or there. It became a fun challenge to take us to crazy places and not tell us what we were eating until we tried a bite.
One time I went to a remote factory and that day happened to be one of the many Chinese festival days. The food served was stuff that isn’t ordinarily served (like many only have cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving). Our translator couldn’t be with me and I was with a bunch of people I never met who barely spoke English. It was one of the most hilarious times of my business traveling. I ate this one powdered root in sauce and they thought it was hilarious that I like it. “We don’t even like this!” We were in tears laughing when they were trying to describe the festival in horrible English because it sounded so ridiculous. “The cat flies to the Moon and argues with a fish”
I don’t know about that - I’m not particularly adventurous about food if ordering something new means I will go hungry if I don’t like it. But I don’t like “meh” . You will still find me at the occasional ChiliAppleFridays or Cheescake factory - because I’m with people. Whose preferences can best be accommodated by that sort of place. The guy who prefers fast food can find a burger there and the one who doesn’t eat red meat can find some sort of grilled chicken. And the people who can eat anything but want relatively cheap can get that - all sorts of preferences/requirements can be accommodated at a Brazilian steakhouse but they are much more expensive.
That’s a useful distinction. The lines are also blurred by the enteric nervous system; a full one third of all the nerves in the human body supply the intestines, and “psychic gut” has many different facets.
That was always when the travel got extra-entertaining, when I started hanging out with my hosts as friends and not as guests. Although I had my worst meal that way when they wanted to take me to a place that felt like home and we ended up at an “Italian” restaurant that was unbelievably appalling.
I generally had a rule that if I ran across something I liked, I should eat a lot of it just in case the next meal was either a long way off or something less favorable for me. That’s how I ended up pounding a hole bowl of deep-fried pigeon heads. Turns out just about anything deep fried is excellent with a little sauce.
Better is a relative term - I’ve had it straight out of the ocean…once.
I’ve tried just about everything raw straight out of a tidepool. Taste-wise Sea urchin lands somewhere in the middle: Well below mussels but miles ahead of sea cucumber or sea anemone.
Yup, I like a good steak but a good steak is not one that merely walked past the broiler.
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I’ve been invited to a banquet; three options for dinner, choose one when RSVPing:
- Surf and Turf
- Chicken Francaise
- Vegetarian option is available
I find it interesting that they give you specifics on the chicken dish but not the other two.
I went with the chicken; it’s okay but is typically a bland dish. I was afraid that the turf option would be prime rib, which is both fatty & typically cooked well under where I’d eat it. Don’t know what vegetarian option is either; something Italian, like stuffed shells or something mushroomy?
Yeah, it’s sort of funny for me, as a wedding/event photographer who often is asked what I’d like for dinner, that I would probably just choose vegetarian there. For larger events (let’s say >120), the “turf” is going to be overcooked for my tastes, as will likely the chicken. If there’s a fish option, I go for that. I will take the venue into account, but I’ve almost never gotten beef cooked anything less than medium well by the time it got to my plate. It’s a mealy mess. So I guess I do have textural issues myself, just in the other direction that I was trying to think of. (I mean, I’ll eat it of course. Calories is calories.)
Just a guess, but it’s probably something like stuffed shells, as you noted. I’ve flown a lot, in business class where you still get meals, and the vegetarian option is typically something Italian. Might be stuffed shells, might be penne, might be ravioli; and all typically swimming in tomato sauce. And it’s not too bad; I’ve certainly enjoyed it, while my seatmate’s chicken or whatever doesn’t look very nice at all.
Yeah, around here, it’s typically pasta of some sort.
I absolutely love baked rigatoni.
You know, there is nothing with trying a food and not liking it. There is nothing wrong with not liking a flavor. Stop assuming everyone who dislikes sushi or spicy Thai food has never tried it.
Take my father. He is an adventurous eater. He has tried a lot of different cuisines. But something about the spice combinations used in a lot of Japanese cooking does not appeal to him. So we don’t go to Japanese restaurants. And don’t even get him started on the evils of broccoli.
I’m with you. Personally, I am not a big fan of Greek food (I like some). For example, I just can’t seem to like Dolmades.
My brother hates eggplant. He’ll eat most things but not eggplant. Yet, he told me that a few weeks ago he had an eggplant dish dish that he actually liked. Surprised him. You never know.
Along those lines, I will still try Dolmades occasionally. Tastes change, recipes are different. Maybe someday I will like it. I don’t think I will but maybe.