Bad crawfish. Every now and then, a rotten crawfish will turn up in a boil–you boil so many that there’s no way to check them individually. It doesn’t ruin the rest of the pot, but if you’re the unlucky soul who bites into the bad one you will find yourself retching for days. The last time it happened to me, it drove me away from all seafood for several years.
The actual taste is indescribable. Know it by the shattered wrecks of crawfish-fanciers it leaves in its wake.
Worse than Robitussin, worse than Root Beer, it’s…
Vicks 44.
Good GOD, that was some foul tasting stuff. Even for cough medicine, it was bad. After taking a dose of that, my throat closed up, and I couldn’t bring myself to swallow for about half an hour. (Insert “puking” smiley here.)
Ranchoth
Scott evil: I agree in theory - though I have never…
Cheap Absinthe my second (though real Czech Absinte, the one in the squareish bottle is nowhere near the list…)
dropped an ‘h’ there. Sorry to all Czech dopers.
Hey, are there ANY Czech dopers?
Nazdar, Ahoj. Te hovne! … Asi ne, mam te rad moc. - nebo: ja te miluju protoze ja sem Karel Gott.
PrahaDope anyone?
As a young lad I was introduce to horehound candy and my mother’s Aunt Nita’s house. It tasted nasty. I told my mom I didn’t like it. She told me to be nice and eat it. A minute later, the gag reflex took over. What was left of the candy shot out and stuck to Nita’s apron just below her left breast. I then threw up all over her coffee table. When we left a little later (after my mother cleaned up my mess), the piece of candy was still stuck to her apron.
I like Moxie cola. I learned to like it, even though I didn’t the first time I tried it. My roommate loved it though, so it was always around.
The dentist mouth mold things have to be pretty bad - the ones they use when you’re getting a crown. The last time I dealt with this stuff was back in April, and it was more fluid than it had been before. Started to press back against the back of my throat and it was the strongest gag reflex I’d ever had. I’d skipped lunch that day, which was probably a good thing.
I was dumb enough to chose the banana flavor dental gel.
I actually didn’t swallow the whole time they were in my mouth and the dentist told me that she wouldn’t swallow that either.
By the way, I like Black licorice/anise flavored things.
I forgot to mention the worst tasting stuff ever. Even worse than the banana dental goo.
Dental cement. The stuff that they use to attach your braces to your teeth. Horrible, just thinking about it makes me gag.
The worst meal ever would be matzoh meal pizza (not the same as matzoh pizza, matzoh meal is crushed up matzoh and you can bake it into really gross tasting pizza crust) topped with both lutefisk and gefilte fish with Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda on the side. We should force the really horrible serial killers to eat that before they have to meet sparky.
I ranted about this once but, cilantro. I think there must be some genetic thing about it, cause my dad and sister have the same problem, but my mom doesn’t. I can smell a couple flakes of cilantro on a plate 12 tables away. And when I eat it, this horrible purfumey detergenty taste just kind of explodes into every part of my mouth and lasts for at least 30 minutes. If you want to simute cilantro all you have to do is put a Tablespoon of Tide and a Tablespoon of Old Spice into your salsa. I haven’t been to a Mexican restauant in 4 years even though it used to be my favorite kind of food. 
A rotted tooth.
I had a temporary cap put on a tooth that I still have to have root canalled. It fell off about six months ago.
You have no idea of the foul taste of an unbrushed tooth that has not been exposed to air in over a year.
(No, I don’t have foul breath or bad teeth-I brush frequently and eat mints. I just have shitty insurance).
There is this kind of Chinese pickled bamboo shoots that I have an instant gag reflex to. I can’t even be in the kitchen when my mother cooks it.
I hate the taste of burning…
Ralph from The Simpsons can relate.
Worst tasting stuff ever…has to be the Sour Apple stuff we got to spray on things we didn’t want our animals chewing on. My wife, curious as to how bad it really was actually licked a drop from her finger. She started gaging immediately and couldn’t get rid of the taste for hours (actually not till she woke up the next morning). Figuring I wouldn’t be that stupid to intentionally taste it I managed to accidentally taste it. I sprayed something I didn’t want my cat munching on and put away the bottle. I grabbed the pizza I had just finished cooking and while eating it I licked one of my fingers clean. Even the little residue from the bottle on my finger almost made me choke. Truly the most bitter, foul, nasty crap I had ever tasted. I’m sure it is along the lines of the quinine mentioned in the OP. The funny part is my animals didn’t seem to mind it too much. My puppy at the time merrily chewed things that had been sprayed with it while the cats still munched on our plants. Go figure…
The worst real food I don’t like has to be brussel sprouts. I’ve heard, but don’t know if it is true, that people who possess a certain gene universally dislike brussel sprouts. Apparently if you have this gene you are more sensitive to a bitter tasting chemical in brussel sprouts that people without the gene can’t taste (or the taste is minimal). People without the gene may or may not like brussel sprouts as a matter of personal choice. The gene thing is probably UL but it works for me…anything so foul should have genetic basis for disliking it.
Robetussin. I’d rather cough for a week than drink that liquified feces.
I used to LOVE Vicks 44…would find every excuse to have another hit…not only did it cure my colds, it probably got me buzzed.
Another entry:
…reach in the fridge for a good cool drink and SURPRISE…MILK GONE SOUR with little chunks in it. That usually gets most people off on a trot to the sink pretty quickly.
Sabin (polio vaccine taken orally). Foul, foul stuff.
maybe you could market the stuff as something to stop people from chewing on their fingernails.
re: Brussel Sprouts
I distinctly remember hearing the same thing from my Anthropology Prof. She passed out little strips of what looked like litmus paper and had us put them on our tongues. If the paper tasted bitter you didn’t have the gene that synthesized that enzyme, if there was no taste, you had the gene.
G.
I’ll put my vote in for Uni (the sea urchin sushi)–that stuff is just nasty.
But the most disgusting “food” has got to be chitlins.
I tried them once…once.
If you don’t know what chitlins are, they’re the intestines of a pig, cleaned and boiled. Then prepared in any number of ways, most commonly fried with hot sauce.
They smell like they could be cleaned a little better. Imagine a plate full of tripe, smelling like pigshit. And the texture? Like warm cream cheese stuffed in hot dog casing.
Well, I thought, *some things smell bad, but taste pretty good. This might be one of them. *
Nope.
So I thought that perhaps the second bite might be more palatable.
Nope.
I didn’t try a third.