Never try Wonka-brand candy, then, because hoo boy.
Turkish delight was a disappointment to me, but I had it in the third grade and experienced (and got over) the disappointment pretty quickly.
Then as an adult I saw it on the dessert menu of a local Middle Eastern restaurant. Their homemade Turkish delight, studded with pistachios and served alongside strong coffee? Yeah, I could see selling out my family for that.
Another disappointment was uni (sea urchin gonads served as sushi)–not because I had such high hopes for it, but because my upbeat curiosity was so cruelly dashed against the rocks of its “Bugs Bunny’s lung biopsy” texture. So orange, so mucousy, so revolting. I ordered it a second time, years later, to see if I was wrong. I was not.
My favorite food disappointment wasn’t mine, it was my cousin-in-law-once-removed or something. My wife and I visited their family and went out to a restaurant. The one-year-old watched in fascination as my wife slurped down her plate of mussels, and finally my wife asked her cousin if the little kid could try one.
She said yes, so my wife gave one to the baby, and over about twenty seconds her face went through stages:
Kale - It’s supposed to be some kind of wonder green that everybody’s nuts for. I tried it and it tasted like sugar-coated rubber.
Frappacino - Supposed to be the nectar of coffees. Tasted like a sugar-coated ashtray to me.
Poutine - Wasn’t bad, gravy and cheese curds on french fries, but I decided a southern climate wasn’t good for it. Cold and snowy outside, sure, the starch content will heat up your blood. In 90+ degree weather, you sweat like a whore in church.
Not really. Most German lagers (and I’m assuming you are having Pils/Lager style beers if you’re describing them as tasting the same) are around 5% abv, like American beers. Maybe some come close to 5.5%, but that’s not going to make much of a difference in terms of feeling drunk faster. For example, Radeberger Pils is 4.8%, HB (Hofbräu) Original is 5.1%, Warsteiner (typical German mass-market beer) is 4.8%, Bitburger is 4.8%, Paulaner Original is 4.9%, etc. To compare, American Bud is 5%, MGD is 4.7%, Coors (not Light) is 5%, PBR is 4.7%, Busch is low at 4.3%, Old Style is 4.6% etc. (Then you have the “Ice” beers which are in the high 5s.)
Now, sure, once you venture outside the lagers and pils, you’ll get more punch, but you’ll get more punch in American beers, too, if you venture outside mass market lager/pils style beers, too (if anything, American brewers tend to overpower their beers alcoholwise vs their European counterparts when it comes to other styles.)
That’s not even true, at least not in any significant way. Mass-market US beer is usually in the 4-6% abv range, with most common German beers settling in the top half of that range (5-6% abv).
What is typically true is that German beers are considerably more intense because they’re made from 100% malted barley and usually add more hops than mass-market US beer, which is typically about 40-50% corn or rice, and have minimal hops added.
I suppose it could be that you don’t drink a lot of beer and even our mass market beer is perceived as bitter; if that’s the case, I can see how German beer might not seem much different.
But you can’t take say… Paulaner Pilsner and compare it to say… Budweiser and say they taste the same; although they’re ostensibly in the same style, there’s a lot of difference in the flavor and the intensity of flavor.
To be fair to British literature, a lot of it may have been coloured by the authors’ experiences of rationing during WWII and the early post-war years (1939-1954), which made modest foodstuffs, such as perhaps a cautiously-flavoured confectionery, something of a rare delight and almost unimaginable treat.
Durian. It’s a southeast Asian fruit notorious for smelling like rotting garbage but tasting like ambrosia.
Alfred Wallace described it like this:
I had a chance to taste some on a recent trip to Malaysia, and the smell wasn’t nearly as disgusting, nor the taste so exquisite, as I had been led to believe.
The smell was kind of musty, like old socks, but no worse than a lot of cheeses (and not nearly as bad as Limburger). I liked the taste OK, but wouldn’t go out of my way for it. It was kind of like custard with a faint tang of onion. I was quite disappointed on both counts.
Stranger things have happened. I’m not a huge fan of the whole “Fresh is king” food movement but I can certainly see the point for seafood. I live over a 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean and I’m just not going to find the good stuff up here. I’m headed for the East U.S. coast early next year for a family trip. Maybe I can find some decent ones there.
I wouldn’t judge British afternoon tea by what an American hotel is likely to offer. If you get the chance to try again in Britain, please do.
Fairy cakes are, I think, mostly intended for children. Scones are, as you say, similar in texture to American biscuits and are intended as a sturdy vehicle for such things as clotted cream and jam. Crumpets need to be toasted until crisp (often served too limp in the US) and are a vehicle for delicious melted butter. These are not fantasy foods, they are just everyday accompaniments to the tea, for a small meal intended to tide you over to your late dinner. You might also find dainty sandwiches on very thin bread, or cake and other pastries. Note that afternoon tea is different from “high” tea, which has been the evening meal for lower class families.
While I like macarons, I simply don’t understand why they’re so expensive. There’s a place near here that sells them for $1.75 each (or $1.50 each if you buy twenty or more) and another, for $2.00 each. It’s madness, I tell you. Madness!
I know the Aplets and Cotlets of which you speak… and I can assure you that fresh Turkish delight in the bazaars, restaurants, and bakeries of Turkey would blow your mind. It’s a nutty chewy marshmallow with lots of fruit gumminess. A similar comparison would be comparing Haribo gummies with the deliciousness of Marks & Spencer’s Percy Pig collection.
I will submit jicama. You know, the root that gets peeled and sliced to be added to your salad as some sort of crunchy, juicy, somewhat sweet equivalent to croutons, but healthier. After trying several times to like it, thinking, “Oh, it adds a sweet dimension here”, I find it is just one of those things I can easily leave out of my salad no matter how healthy it may be. Has the mouthfeel of watery, vaguely sweet styrofoam that was rubbed thru a bowl of dust.
This is probably true, though the hotel menu claimed their chef had specially gone over to London to learn to create the classic delights. :dubious:
OTOH, in the “Midsummer Murder” series there was one episode with a monstrous woman and her weirdo son, and they offered tea to the policemen. Then the son wheeled out a cart packed full of all sorts of little cakes and pastries and cookies and all and they looked wonderful. Would that sort of offering just be called tea, too? Or does it have a special name so you’ll know when you’ve found one.
Or does no one except murderous whackos actually do that? In which case I’ll skip it, thanks.