At a luau in Maui in 1994, I sampled a substance that looked vaguely like pudding.
It was poi.
It is not enough to say that poi simply tastes bad. It was the antithesis of taste. It was the black hole of taste.
How Hawaiians lived on this shite I’ll never know.
[sub]but the roasted salt pork I had at the luau still remains as the finest meat I’ve ever tasted[/sub]
Something off a dim sum cart that combined the egg of a reptile and tertiary decomposition.
A friend of mine is always giving me vitamins and such to take.She gave me some fo-ti capsules once.(Eastern and Western
herbalists recommend Fo-Ti as a supplement to maintain youthful vigor, increase energy, tone the kidneys and
liver, and purify the blood. Fo-Ti is also employed as a remedy for insomnia, stomach upset, and diabetes. )
Well you take it with a meal.I took it after a meal,and it must have just sat on the top of what i just ate.About 15 mins later i let out a big burp.I think the capsule dissolved and the powdery inside all blew out in the most vile cloud of dust coming out my mouth and nose.It was actual powder that came out.I was close to pukeing it took me an hour of brushing my teeth and blowing my nose, and i still tasted it.My throat and nose burned for a couple hours after.
I got a putrid oyster on the half shell at an oyster bar. The taste was incredibly horrible and hard to describe, but oh did it make me gag. I power purged about half my guts onto my plate. I did manage to make it to the toilet for the second and third waves.
Still love those slippery little devils, though.
Gasoline. About twenty years ago.
The lawnmower was empty but the car was full. Why take the jerry can to the gas station? Just a length of garden hose for a siphon, and…
…get a mouthful of the most vile-tasting stuff you’ve ever had. Indescribably bad. Took ages and plenty of water to get rid of the taste–and as a heavy smoker in those days, I couldn’t even think of having a cigarette for a couple of hours.
Gasoline has got to be the worst I’ve ever tasted.
My mother used to take some sort of liquid potassium supplement, and used to make the most gawdawful faces while drinking it. I always told her that it couldn’t POSSIBLY be that bad, and she let me take a sip. It WAS that bad, and worse. It tasted like orange juice that had gone bad two weeks ago, and has been sitting out in the summer sun ever since. Fortunately, she’s no longer on that medication.
Other memorable tastes include various dyes and solutions that I’ve had to drink for medical tests. Anyone who’s had a glucose tolerance test can tell you about Lemondex or Glucola. These drinks are carbonated drinks, which have a THOUSAND calories in them. Literally a thousand calories, packed into 12 or 16 ounces of fluid (I forget which). Now, I have quite a sweet tooth, but I have met my match in this stuff.
Vomit.
Lutefisk.
My ex-husband was 3rd generation Norwegian. Their summer get togethers featured lutefisk. (Making lutefisk indoors requires torching the kitchen to blackened embers to remove the smell.)
For the blissfully uninitiated, lutefisk starts out as planks of dried cod fish–“planks” because they’re about the same consistency as 2x4’s. The cod is then soaked in lye which imparts an unbelieveable tang, not to mention turning the fish into whiteish/translucent rubber. The fish is rinsed off–I suspect with reindeer urine–then popped into a kettle of boiling water to stew for a while.
The stuff REEKS like a bait box left in hot sun for a week. Forget average fish smell; this is concentrated rotting fish stench. It attracts flies from miles around; figures, as they also relish poop and decaying flesh. Even dogs put their tails down and slink away from the reek.
Bobbing chunks of pale, rubbery fish are scooped into bowls with a little boiling water, then topped off with melted butter. The closest description is rotted, boiled fish gummi bears. It looks, smells and tastes like something a grave robber with a Crock Pot would whip up for dinner.
::gags and turns clammy just from the memory::
Veb
What I want to know is-isn’t lye POISONOUS?
Yep, sure 'tis. The mess IS rinsed off well before boiling. (I was kidding about using reindeer piss. Given that the lutefisk picnics were in Iowa they probably used ordinary cow pee.)
Oh, okay. They actually used water but the end result still tasted godawful. The soaking in lye thing isn’t all that unusual, btw. It’s how ordinary corn is turned into hominey.
Veb
Um…whose?
Actually, I don’t think I want to know.
EEEwwwwww!
A couple of bad taste-memories come to mind. I once opened one of those little cans of orange juice that we’d taken with us on a camping trip. It had sat too long in the cooler water and rusted, a fact I didn’t discover until I took a big swig. Rusty orange juice-ergh.
I once ate a goose-liver appetizer that was combined with dates and bacon. I still twitch to remember that. I was at a political fundraiser and trying to be an adult but it was all I could do not to run around clawing it off my tongue.
And when I was nursing, I started taking all these supplements to help with my pathetic milk supply. I got tired of the pills so I bought a bunch of little brown bottles of the concentrated oils. Fenugreek, Alfalfa, Marshamallow root, chasteberry, etc. Since they tasted so awful, I figured it’d be better to make one nasty shot of them and drink it all down in a little diet pepsi. Sweet jesus on a cracker, it was awful. Torture.
Salted Mui.
Don’t know what it is? Neither did I, it’s apparently a Chinese, dried, salted plum thing. A little brownish lump with white powder on it. Innocent looking, really. A malevolent food in reality, it hurt, I felt pain from the taste of it. Can a taste actually hurt? Yes, it can. Salted Mui has proven that unequivocally.
For some hilarious stories of horrifying food products, check out the Bad Candy guys.
Ear wax. Blech.
Howyadoin,
My vote goes to Samuel Adams Triple Bock. This is produced once a year, and the claim to fame is the 17% alcohol content, pretty kicking for what is supposed to be a beer-esque substance. In fact, it’s illegal to sell in several states due to the high alcohol content. And did I mention that it goes for $80 per case?
Imagine, Guinness Stout (not a personal favorite, but I’ll drink it on occasion) boiled down to a concentration around that of cough syrup. It tastes like you’ve just licked a spittoon. I felt bad, because my bar manager had pulled strings to get the stuff for me as a surprise. I finished one 8 oz (?) bottle, and that was it for me.
Yecchh…
-Rav
P.S. What’s so bad about ear wax? 
Worst -food- I’ve tasted?
Thai-style curry. It was like trying to eat perfume. Any type of mushroom is a close second.
Worst -thing- I’ve tasted?
Epsom salts. Bitter. Nasty. Vile.
Wow, that doesn’t sound like any Thai-style curry I’ve had. Where did you get it?
I can’t decide if the answer here is lychee (talk about tasting like perfume) umeboshi plum (why didn’t you warn me that it’s salty) or my mother in law’s iced tea. I’m originally from the south, where we believe in strong, sweet tea. My mother in law handed me a glass of some pale tan fluid over ice with nothing in it. It was – and remains, as this is her normal recipe) repulsive.
Dental cement. The stuff that that stick your braces on with. It tasted like puke and bad mouthwash.
Coffee! I was 8 years old running into my parents kitchen. A cup of (soda) on the counter. WRONG, it’s coffee. However, now Coffee is the the lifegiver, the real thing (not coke). The Bean is life itself…