Olive Garden and Dominos. With the way people joke about both online I was expecting the WORST but I enjoy them a lot.
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Haggis. The chip shop just around the corner from the pub where I used to hang out served deep-fried haggis. Loved it. Stopped in there often for a fish supper with haggis and a Scotch egg. Then I finally got to try normal (not deep-fried) haggis, serve on a plate with the usual sides. Also wonderful!
Mushy peas. The first time I had them was from a chip shop in Keswick when we were traveling through the Lake District with my in-laws. The in-laws went out, but we stayed at the hotel because my wife wasn’t feeling well. I trundled down the street for fish and chips, and I knew my wife would want some veg besides the chips, so I ordered us some mushy peas, too. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed them. I likened them to a really thick pea soup. My wife was far less impressed.
The outpost locations in tourist areas, e.g. San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf, Las Vegas Strip,are by far the worst.
Theres been some enshittification at all locations since the 1970s, but the tourist joints are mobbed all day, the workers are thrashed, management seems to be interested only in the revenue & quality & cleanliness are both in the shitter.
I’ve been a homebrewer since 1980 (well, I helped make a home brew in 1980). The local homebrew supply place had quite the brew crew. We did a triangle taste testing of all the major beers a couple years ago. Coors Banquet was by far the clear winner.
Back in the 70’s, basically there was no craft beer. This is prolly where Coors got it’s reputation. It was hard to get far outside of Colorado, and it was the best of a sorry litter. Before my time, but Ballentine Ale was sold off to Flagstaff in 1972. By most accounts, Ballentine Ale was pretty good. And genetics shows it’s basically the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale yeast.
A couple of summers ago a friend and I stopped in a resort in the mountains to have some refreshments after a long, hot hike. They were all out of usual crafty stuff and offered us a couple bottles of Coors. After initially chuckling at our “settling” for this stuff, and after a couple swigs - surprisingly good - cold, wet, and very good tasting!
Hence the plot of Smokey and the Bandit.
Yup. In a similar vein …
My dad was an airline pilot. Back in the day lots of east coast-based crewmembers, more FAs than pilots, made a decent little side gig out of flying West, buying a 6-pack or 3 of Coors, bringing it home to NYC or Boston or even Chicago and selling it to friends and neighbors for a hefty markup. The stuff was crazy popular as an underground gray market product.
Back in the day you could do the same thing working international and buying booze at the duty free store on the way home. Nowadays the booze is cheaper at e.g. Costco than it is at duty free.
Heh. Reminds me of my sister’s first wedding, back in 1974, in Wichita, where Coors was readily available. Her fiancée was from Chicago, and his dad and brothers were a bunch of guys who liked their booze. I overheard one of the brothers bragging to my teetotaling Grandfather about how many cases of Coors they were taking back to Chicago. After that conversation, Grandpa told my sister “Remember, you’re not just marrying the man, you’re marrying his family.”
Grandpa was right. The marriage ended less than ten years later.
Darn handy advice. Especially if delivered earlier than the wedding. Much earlier.
Morning before is not much better than morning after. A little; not much.
I was at a military gathering, and we had several cases of different beers, and a 12 pack of regular Coors. When we left three days later, the only thing left was 11 can of Coors.
When I was a college student in Detroit in the early to mid 80s, we used to go on beer runs to Canada. We’d pick up cases of Labatt’s, Moosehead and Molson and bring it back to the states. This despite the fact that most of those brands were freely available in the U.S. But we believed that Canada watered down the beer they exported to America; we were convinced that the Canadian stuff was higher in alcohol and tasted better. Years later I read a newspaper article that said this was never true; that Canadian beer exported to America was the exact same stuff.
There were a couple types of beer in Canada that weren’t available in the states, like Molson Brador-- a ‘malt liquor’ that was a little stronger than your typical lager (6%- still not that high compared to an american IPA today) and a distinct taste. And the fact that the drinking age in Canada was 19 was also a big draw for us youngsters at the time 
Zima. It had been around for several years in the 90s, but most guys (like me) considered it a slightly-less-than-masculine beverage. My wife brought me one at a picnic and I was too lazy to walk over and get something else. (Besides, it’s a sin to toss an opened adult beverage.)
I loved the stuff. There were beach vacations where I know my wife and I drank cases of it while on the beach. I went into mourning in 2008 when they finally discontinued it. I still had a couple six-packs in my pantry when my adult step-daughter came to visit. As soon as she saw it, she exclaimed, “Oh, my God! Zima! Please, please, please can I drink a couple?”
Fourthed, I disliked avocados for the first 20 years of my life or so.
See I had tried the fruit directly from the tree when I was 8 and disliked it intensely.
Then, when I was 20 I traveled to Ecuador for work, in the hotel were I lived I was offered “Aguacate”, not knowing what exactly that was (Avocado/Aguacate is the Nahuatl(“Aztec”)-derived name, in Argentina and other parts of the southern cone we know it by the Quichua(“Inca”)-derived name of “Palta”) I accepted.
I got served a creamy soup inside a palta fruit, crestfallen thinking I had inadvertently ordered a disgusting concoction I tried it, it was delicious.
I’ve learned since then that you need a bit of preparation to properly enjoy avocados/guacamole.
Tzatziki, or Mediterranean dill yogurt. It sort of doesn’t count because I didn’t know it existed before I tried it. But I stayed far away from any yogurt based foods before I tried it, because I dislike the texture, and the lack of flavor only makes the texture more apparent.
At a Turkish restaurant 5 or so years ago, the waitress recommended it as a side dish and I, contrary to my usual picky eating habits, acceded to her recommendation without fully knowing what it was. Tzatziki is far from flavorless. Its strong dill flavor makes an excellent dipping or topping sauce for red meat. As soon as I saw the dish of it, I could see that it was yogurt based but I tried it anyway, so I guess there was around a 5 second window in which the thread title applied.
I had a similar experience with asparagus. As a very small child I remember my mom serving asparagus at dinner one night, and convincing me to try it. I found it so disgusting I remember gagging, and my eyes rolling back in my head from the disgustingly biitter flavor. The awfulness of the experience emotionally scarred me. Now, what my mom probably served at the time was reheated canned asparagus, which I think I would still find pretty disgusting.
So for years I considered asparagus evil. Until I was around 21 and worked at a hotel where they had a buffet-style employee cafeteria. They had steamed asparagus one day, so I got up the nerve to try it again, and I loved it. It happened to be Springtime, when fresh Michigan asparagus is readily available, and I started buying, steaming and eating pound after pound of fresh asparagus for weeks while it was readily available. To this day, it’s probably my favorite vegetable.
Unfortunately, I had never heard of the ‘asparagus pee’ phenomenon. The following is a bit TMI if you don’t want to know any more about the subject, so spoiler-blurred: I became very concerned about the very pronounced, odd odor whenever I urinated. Now that I know what it is, it smells like asparagus to me, but at the time I did not make the connection. I even mentioned it at a checkup visit to my doc, and he tested me for UTIs and STDs (all negative). It remained a mystery to me for years afterward.
I grew up eating them. Loved 'em since forever.
But one of their biggest downsides is that the interval from “ripe enough to be great” to “overripe enough to be nasty” can be as little as 12 hours in a warm climate. And the more the fruit has been mishandled earlier, the quicker it turns to nasty.
It’s just plain difficult to judge their state of ripeness from the outside. The timeframe of good enough turning great is a little longer, maybe 24 hours. But it’s easy to go to the store, buy 6 that all seem decent, and end up eating 1 and pitching 5.
They are too frustrating to be a good staple. No matter how much I’d like to eat one every day.
That’s funny since I recently read a Reddit post about some guy trying raclette for the first time and what a salty, congealed mess it was.
I’m pretty iron-stomached. And eat a lot of cheese and a lot of beef. Used to eat greasy loaded deep dish pizza without issue.
A couple years ago I had a raclette steak for dinner. First time ever. Nice restaurant. Tasted great, albeit the cheese was a little bunch of work to chew.
I have not been made that sick from a meal in decades. It was partly overeating, and I guess mostly a monster grease / cheese overdose. I really doubt the food was spoiled or miscooked or anything like that. It wasn’t bad; it and I just did not get along.
Not gonna try that again. I’d take a bite or two of somebody else’s as a test, but not gonna order a full meal of it for me.
Sounds like you were “un”-pleasantly surprised by trying that food item.