I can eat and have enjoyed most of the things described by everyone else… There is one thing where I draw the line. Kidney’s. Any form. Celery crunch on a urine soaked piece of organ meat. Never. Again. Vile!
Not too fond of Kale or Chia seeds either, for textural reasons. I don’t like eating peppery, slightly chewy lettuce or grains of sand either.
I was just coming back to mention calf kidneys. I had them on a trip to Switzerland. I’m glad I tried something new, but I won’t be repeating that anytime soon. Weird, acrid taste, with a strange texture.
Look out for it in the Bavarian Forest and in the Vogtland, that’s where it’s made. I don’t remember exactly where my BIL got it, but I think that he brought it from a holiday in Bavaria.
Oh, yes. I forgot about those. I don’t know if I had them “properly prepared,” though. I didn’t mind it in steak & kidney pie, but I do remember my dad making it once when I was a kid, and it was absolutely revolting, even by my very “open” standards. I suspect part of it was that he didn’t know how to prepare it well. I grew up eating stuff like tripe and liver, which both my mom and dad made pretty well, but this was the only time they ever tried foisting kidneys on us, so I suspect they were not experienced in its preparation. Still, even prepared well, I suspect I might not like it so much.
My dad was pretty funny about this stuff. He damned well knows I’m the son who will eat anything (growing up, it was eat what’s in front of you or don’t eat at all, and I never had the force of will to challenge that notion), but he would still try to “trick” me into eating “weird” things. One day, he came back from the shrimp shack with a bunch of deep-fried goodies. He hands a paper bag to me and asks me to try one of the shrimp. I pick it up and ask him what it is. He says “shrimp.” I say, dad, you know I’ll eat anything, why don’t you tell me what it is. “Shrimp!” But, I protest, it’s obviously not shrimp. It’s straight and has what appears to be a bone in it. “No, no, it’s special shrimp.” I just roll my eyes, sigh, and go “fine” and eat the damned thing. “Hah! It’s not shrimp. It’s frog’s legs.” I say, yeah, yeah, you got me, dad, now pass the hot sauce. I also recall him trying to do the same thing with calamari, claiming they were onion rings or some such bullshit. Dads are a funny bunch. I mean, he knows I don’t care and will eat it anyway.
The worst properly prepared dish I’ve ever eaten…<cue watery dissolve into flashback>
I was living in Kansas at the time, stationed at Ft. Riley. Freshly divorced, I had somehow managed to snag an honest-to-goodness, genuinely accredited, college educated, four year degree holding chef for a live-in rebound girlfriend. She had a passion, a passion for trying new recipes that were totally unlike anything she’d ever made before. She would snag recipes from where ever she could find them, magazines, back of soup cans, old newspapers. Her cookbook collection was a thing of wonder with cook books going back to the earlier half of the 20th century. Sometimes it filled me with a strange, joyous dread at the thought of the eldritch combination of cured meat and jello she might conjure out of that collection of cookery grimoires on any given night. My fears were unfounded though, nothing vile or dire was ever concocted from those books. The villain in my story is a can of Campbell’s Pork and Beans.
Campbell’s, it would seem, had run a contest for recipes using their product. To this day I can not force my brain to recall the name of this [del]demonic summoning spell[/del] recipe or even the complete list of ingredients. Only Campbell’s Pork and Beans, and ketchup. There were other things, other ingredients in this dish. I know there were because I’ve tasted Pork and Beans mixed with ketchup, and though vile, that combination tastes nothing like the foul brew she concocted that day.
My two sons were visiting for the summer that year. They took one small taste and burst into tears. I put a spoonful in my mouth, assuming they were suffering after shocks from the divorce. Setting a good fatherly example I ate the first spoonful and put another in my mouth, chewed and swallowed. I [del]avoided eating more[/del] gently admonished my two boys for refusing to eat a dish my girlfriend had worked hard on preparing as part of a nutritious meal. I put another spoonful in my mouth. My stomach made a threatening sound. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that heard it, but at that point, Chef Girlfriend announced, “It’s not right that we should be the only ones eating this delightfully flavored dish, I’m going to give some to the cats!” She set her plate on the floor for the cats to have, with me and the boys quickly following her example. Pizza was ordered within minutes.
The cats shit on her pillow that night.
ashwahganda root powder is just awful taste wise but I will never eat squid had it years ago and it wasn’t a bad taste but it was like chewing rubber bands, had some as sushi for another try and by god the lump that came out of the sucker thing when I chewed was, well also like rubber but it was quite upsetting, like finding a toe in your drink, squid are, hang on was it octopus?
The talk of fermented stuff earlier reminded me of kimchi. I spent a month in Korea and tried my best at every meal to try it in all the various regions. Hated it every single time.
I think people commenting on squid and octopus being like chewing rubber has not had it properly prepared…
There are lots of folk in this thread who clearly didn’t read the “properly” prepared part.
My vote:
Goat.
DAMN I love kimchi!
Interesting. The several times I’ve had goat around here, it was pretty mild and quite similar to beef, with a hint of lamb, perhaps. I was expecting something a bit more “gamey,” and was surprised not to find that the case. My understanding though that, like lamb, it’s dependent on the age of the animal, with younger goats being mild, and older being stronger in flavor.
I love this post. Poor little boys. Poor big adults.
I had a cabrito burger in Texas, once. Very tasty, seasoned just right, would do it again.
I’m a super picky eater and even I like curry goat.
Pizza in Rome, “behind” the Colosseum. Everything was bad and on top of that it was amazingly oily.
I’ve had white-bread + ketchup + fake parmisan on-a-toaster-oven that were gourmet compared to that.
I might not eat a rotting corpse before I’d eat durian, but it would take some consideration.
I really really tried to like it. But nope. At best it was tolerable.
You sure it was “properly prepared” then? 
In addition to the previously mentioned natto, there is another Japanese delicacy called tororo. This is a root vegetable that is grated so that it turns into slime. It has, as far as I can remember, little or no taste, but it has the approximate look and texture of fresh snot.
If it happens to come up among my Japanese acquaintances, I call it what it is, “hanamizu*.” Unless it’s one of the sisters-in-law in which case I keep my snark to myself.
*literally “nose water” or nasal mucous.
Seal. Harp seal, to be specific.
It was disgusting. It tasted like some unholy combination of beef and very fishy fish, which is, I guess, pretty much what it is, given that it’s a mammal that lives entirely on fish.
It was just unpleasant. And my hosts then said they’d saved the best part for me. The flipper. It was even worse than the rest of the animal.