You can get frog legs at any county fair now. I love them.
Foie gras, crocodile, goat, baby lamb (if you ever go to the North of Castilia, Spain, say Burgos or Ávila: try it), suckling pig (in Segovia, North-West of Madrid, try that too if you can), ostrich, oysters and all kinds of other molluscs including land snails, sea urchin, horse, duck tongues, pig’s trotters, cow’s tongue, donkey (the best salami is made traditionally of donkey meat, claim my rumanian friends), alligator, frog legs, bison, venison, quail, grouse, rabbit, hare, chicken feet, kangaroo, veal (seriously? transgressive? Try ossobuco next time you visit a good Italian restaurant, if you like tender gelatinous meat, you’ll like it), elk, bear, fried marrow, pig’s ears, pig’s snout, the worm from a bottle of mezcal, dried grasshoppers… most things have already been mentioned here and I not really consider them a transgression.
And then there were some strange bugs in my mixed platter in Korea: black, shiny and creamy custardy yellow in the inside. That tasted weird. Nattō and umeboshi took some deep breathing.
Of course, if you come to Peru you have to try Guinea Pig or “cuy” as we call it. Not a lot of meat, but crispy skin. Traditionally they serve the whole animal, like a full chicken which may not be from everyone’s taste. Fancy restaurants serve just the legs that look like really small chickens.
Good. May be a bit tricky, like cooking duck, in that it has so much fat it can taste bad if you don’t know how to fry it well.
It used to be super common in Italy, but I’ve had tripe, or as they call it, “tripa”, when I was in Italy. I was told that there was a specific region in Rome that did it best, so that’s where I went to try it. My verdict… It was ok. Takes on flavoring and sauces very well, but considering it is what it is the texture was a little off putting. Also I’ve had Ostrich and Alligator, but again, nothing too crazy.
Fried silkworm pupae, maybe. My wife ordered a big platter of those in Shenzhen and then only nibbled a few. I ate about half of the plateful.
I’ve also eaten roadkill (moose that was killed in a traffic accident).
True, I guess. Seems like most people in this thread understand “transgressive” to mean “something that my culture finds distasteful or disgusting.”
I understood it to mean something that crossed some ethical or moral line. Like perhaps veal or foie gras (because of the cruelty involved in production), or eating an endangered species.
So I wouldn’t think of the vast majority of foods cited in this thread as transgressive. Tripe? Nope. Yummy. I love mondongo. Guinea pig? No. Not something I’d go out of my way for, but not bad, either (yes, I’ve had it). Same for various insects. And game meats.
I don’t think I’d draw a moral line at eating dog, example. Well, maybe someone’s pet, but otherwise? No. I would go a long way to avoid it, though. Ostrich? Transgressive? They’re raised for meat right here in the US. All kinds of weird seafood in Japan. Horse sashimi. Chicken sashimi (probably best avoided simply for health reasons. Also, it’s not very good).
But I’m starting to rethink my love of veal. And I haven’t eaten any in ages. Maybe if I could find a cruelty-free farm, or something - I do love it.
And I never liked foie gras anyway.
Roo tastes like liver to me.
^^I don’t remember what it tasted like, but it was not very good. I think I had a few bites and said, enough for me.
I haven’t had any meals that tick the moral transgression meter.
From the aesthetic standpoint, my gentile friends view the consumption of jarred gefilte fish at Passover to be incomprehensible lunacy. I love the stuff.
Yes, that is what they looked like. They seemed to be darker in my recolection, maybe it was the lightning. Thanks for he name of the beast! Beondegi it was.
A restaurant my wife and I frequented featured a “Wild Things” option with Alligator, Antelope, Buffalo, Kangaroo, Wild Boar, and Venison. The buffalo was particularly good, the alligator tasted like tough fish, the rest wasn’t particularly distinguishable, but nothing was bad. None of them are really what I’d consider transgressive. The skate wing I had at a Spago might have been unusual, but not taboo.
Veal, I guess? It was included in Olive Garden’s canneloni al forno (before they took it off the menu 
), but IMHO it . I learned why veal is sought after when I ordered it at Club 33. So good, but I’m not ordering it under normal circumstances.
I had raw sea urchin in a Japanese restaurant. When they serve it to you, the spines are still moving. Delicious, best thing on the menu. Expensive too.
Well, going back to the OP.
So yeah, even if it isn’t excessively out there, it isn’t hard to hit the mark the OP set. Let us be honest, if you aren’t a foodie, there are a lot of people freaked out by things that aren’t beef, chicken, fish or pork based. I once had a co-worker look askance at me for talking about my cider braised roast duck. And duck is common and freaking delicious! [ can’t deny they are adorable both young and old though ]
My grandmother deep-fried it. Tasted like greasy chicken. 
My brother once brought home a rattlesnake. He dipped it in batter and fried it. Tasted like chicken. (But it had too much bone, and not enough meat.)
Bambi Venison was delicious.
Salmon roe is common in Japan, but a little weird in the U.S. On the one hand, it’s caviar. On the other hand, it’s bait. Pretty good, though.
Yes, and that, at least here in CA, is socially conscious as the urchins kill the kelp. It tastes liek the ocean smell, at least to me.
Lovely, but not as a meal.
Club 33? So jealous.
Veal crates have been illegal in the EU since 2007, and had been mostly phased out before that. And Switzerland has moved away from white (milk fed) veal, and I think that’s also illegal now.
So while veal is not demonized in Switzerland, perhaps that’s because it was demonized.
It’s like Cthulu on a plate you are about to eat. 
Switzerland’s not part of the EU and it is still permitted to use veal crates and they are even available online. I’ve seen many of them, but normally empty, probably because they are only used for a few months.
https://www.rovagro.ch/de/338-kalberunterstande-iglus
It is possible to buy only field-raised veal.
A log of food in China, especially from sidewalk vendors, was of sketchy origin when I lived there 6 years ago. Some of the chicken was certainly pigeon. A meat carcass outside the butcher shop had no head or feet, but might have been a deer. The Wal-Mart in Jinan sold small, frozen sharks. I went to a chicken restaurant with a co-worker and, due to the language barrier, could not read the menu so we just ordered the most expensive thing on it. As we nibbled away I joked that all these pieces looked like heads and feet.
They were heads and feet.
I’m in Korea now, and about the most transgressive things I can get here are caviar and Havana cigars. I’ve resisted trying to find dog meat restaurants, but I know they are here.