Something you always wanted to try, and were sorely disappointed with when you finally did

Cafe Society
1

Recently I had a “Jungle Bird”, which is a sort of tiki/tropical drink that features Campari as a primary ingredient. Prior to this, I’d always considered Campari unfit for human consumption because of its extreme bitterness. But I really dug the Jungle Bird, so I got a small bottle of Campari to try my own hand at making them.

So… after making a few decent Jungle Birds, I started looking around for what else can be made with Campari. I saw the Negroni, and though “Yeah, I’ve read about those, and people really seem to like them. I should try one of those!”

So I did. And I didn’t cheap out either; I used Campari, Carpano Antica, and Tanqueray. And I did not like the resulting drink. Which is weird, I like gin, I like vermouth in other drinks, and Campari is growing on me. But apparently not all three together.

I was pretty disappointed. I tend to build up those old-school classic drinks in my head, because if so many people love them, they must be good. But it wasn’t for me. Same thing with In 'N Out burgers. Nothing bad about them, but just… ok. After literally decades of propaganda from expat Californians, I was pretty underwhelmed and disappointed when I finally did eat there in San Francisco.

So what have you had that you always wanted to try, but were disappointed with when you finally did?

Something you never tried, and were pleasantly surprised when you finally did
Something you were always disappointed with, until you finally had it properly prepared
2

Sex.?:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::woman_shrugging:

3

Indoor skydiving. Meh.

4

I only know two people that like negronis; my best mate, and myself. Literally anyone else I’ve ever asked, or has freely given their opinion when they’ve seen me drink one etc, thinks they are revolting. So you’re (anecdotally) in the majority!

5

Suzuki RE-5

What an ugly, underpowered, heavy piece of shit this was. Didn’t even keep it for Collector Status. But I turned a pretty good profit when I unloaded it.

6

Durian fruit. It tasted just fine, but after hearing all the stories about how horrible it smells, I found the actual aroma kinda underwhelming. It just smells like onions that have started to go bad.

Malort, on the other hand, is just as terrible as they say it is.

7

Yeah, I, too, found sex underwhelming. It wasn’t bad, but I realized how ridiculous the porn and sex-hype industry was.

I also did skydiving, too, and it was 1) too expensive 2) quite miserable and 3) the yank of the parachute canopy opening made the harness compress my balls forcefully.

8

Dniper Sidecar rig.

Even worse than the RE-5. How it ran at all is a mystery. Leaked anywhere it could. Gas, Oil, Air. All bearings where about as durable as Black-Eyed Peas. Ugly. Heavy. I’d say underpowered, if it had any power at all.

Was Goddamn lucky to break even. Don’t eBay when drinking, folks.

9

Seconded, on the smell. I don’t get why people freak out; it’s no worse than a trash can with a few onions/oranges/banana skins you meant to take out yesterday but forgot.

It is, however, a very STRONG smell. Not particularly unpleasant, just powerful. When I lived in Jakarta, durian was sometimes, not always, sold in grocery stores. We always knew, as soon as we walked in, whether there was any durian in the produce section that day.

As to the OP’s question … kopi luwak (the coffee made from beans excreted by luwak, a species of civet in Indonesia - popularized by the movie The Bucket List) didn’t taste particularly great to me. It wasn’t awful, just underwhelming.

10

It does linger, but it’s nothing compared to surströmming. I bought a can off of eBay once just to try it and it was so foul I could only stomach one bite, even when I prepared it the way the Swedes do (on a piece of flatbread with boiled potato, onions, sour cream, and dill).

11

Add me to the list of people who love a good negroni. For me, it’s the perfect pre-dinner drink. The specific combination of bitter and sweet wakes up my palate and enhances the meal that follows. It’s not a good with-food or after-meal drink; it’s specifically tuned to be enjoyed before eating.

My nomination for the title question is the game Skyrim. I came to it many years late, after hearing a generation of gamers raving about its endlessly flexible sandbox nature — the story might be silly and derivative, and the characters thin and unmemorable, but you can enjoy yourself screwing around and finding all sorts of crazy ways to stretch the game engine.

So eventually I got around to it, and, okay, sure, it’s a good sandbox … and?

I mean, it was fun for a little while, but I need more to keep me engaged. There’s no way I’ll ever get close to the thousands of hours some people claim to have spent in the game.

12

Skyrim is a dumbed-down version of Morrowind, which IMO is a strong contender for the best western RPG of all time. The gameplay is kinda clunky by today’s standards, and there are about a dozen different ways to break the game by exploiting its mechanics, but it has some amazing worldbuilding - Michael Kirkbride essentially built a religion with a 3000-year history from scratch by drawing on Vedic mysticism and Crowley and the Catholic church and Second Temple Judaism, complete with schismatic factions and heretics and an old cult that follows the ancient ways and a living god who’s possibly a liar or a hypocrite or an honest man or a hermaphrodite prostitute who got lucky or all of the above because the ancients accidentally broke the concept of linear time and causality once, and it’s one of the most interesting takes on how religions are created and how they evolve that I’ve ever seen.

13

A couple years ago I took a three-day auto racing class; something I’d thought of doing for a long time. I was somewhat disappointed. Some of that may have been my fault, taking too big a step up from other driving events I’d done before. The class also felt very rushed and the feedback I got wasn’t very helpful. I went off the track at the end of the second day. They said the car was damaged and I paid my full insurance deductible, but no one would tell me what the damage was. Looking back, I think I was sitting too far forward and that may have contributed to the problems I had.

14

Caviar. A lot seems to be made about it in books, movies, and TV, so when I got the chance to sample it, I was happy to.

I won’t say that I was “sorely disappointed,” but I will certainly say that I was underwhelmed. This is the stuff that costs an outrageous amount per ounce? This is the stuff that was on the first-class menu of the Titanic?

It might as well have been salty gummy candy. It had the texture of gummies, with enough salt to immediately stop a weak heart. I did not dislike it, but I did not like it enough to ever order it again.

15

I’ll third or fourth this one. I found that it didn’t smell anywhere near as bad as its reputation makes it, and it didn’t taste anywhere near as good. I bought one and brought it to a friend’s picnic – someone who was famed for outrageousness, so i figured the fruit would fit right in. A few people tried it, but no one was really impressed.

I had a similar experience with breadfruit, as I’ve related before on this Board. I’d read about it in Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Harpooner Ned Land slices up a fresh breadfruit and fries the slices to produce a light pastry-like confection. I wanted to try that.

Only it turns out that Verne got it very wrong. That’s not how you prepare a breadfruit, nd the result isn’t like light pastry. After I’d remarked about the scene in 20KLutS to a co-worker, he managed to find a breadfruit and gave it to me. I read up on how to properly prepare it, and did so. I was never so disappointed in my life. No wonder the breadfruits that Britain imported from the Pacific to the Caribbean never worked out.

16

I think there may be some genetic component to the durian reaction- to me they smell absolutely appalling. My old local Asian supermarket occasionally got them in fresh, and I’d be feeling sick after a minute or two standing nearby when they did. I’ve never eaten the fresh fruit, but I’ve had durian doughnuts (in Indonesia) and durian filled chocolates (brought in to work by a Malaysian co-worker) which, to me, tasted awful, overpoweringly of rotten onion. It also repeated on me for the rest of the day.

I had been keen to try the fruit at least once, but the processed version was so bad that I chickened out before even getting that far.

For the chocolates at least, about half the people at work who tried one had the same reaction as me while the rest thought they were pleasant, mildly caramely and said they could detect no onion notes at all and had no idea what the rest of us were talking about.

The Malaysian co-worker tries to time his trips home to the local durian fruiting season as he likes the things so much.

17

Turkish Delight. Gak! I can’t believe C.S. Lewis suckered all of us like that.

18

Poutine

I had been looking forward to trying it ever since I’d heard about it. I really didn’t care for it. The first time it had BBQ pulled pork on it and I thought the flavors really clashed. So I tried it a couple more times in other restaurants and my reaction was meh. I don’t like the way the gravy makes the fries soggy and the flavors are just OK, nothing to write home about.

19

Maybe similar to the cilantro aversion. I don’t even like to be near cilantro in the produce department of the grocery store. The smell makes me feel nauseated. And yet I have friends who will eat big handfuls of fresh cilantro when they find it on the condiment bar at the Mexican restaurant.

When it’s in a cooked dish, I’m convinced I can taste it in a ratio of one part per million. And it’s everywhere now. In every cuisine.

20

I was going to say that. I mean, it’s okay, but it’s not Betray Your Family to the White Witch delicious.