I’ve got a thread about the first time I tried Korean food, and got what I now know was a dolsot bibimbap.
As bizarre as it was to me then, I love it now.
I grew up in Birmingham (the english version) in the 70s and 80s, a city where Indian and Chinese food was ubiquitous, so nothing exotic about those foods.
But you should have seen our excitement when TGI Friday’s opened up (this would have been the earlly 80s)- all this strange, exotic, vaguely spicy pancakey stuff with beans and rice and things. We’d never seen the like.
Up to this point, mexican and texmex were things rumoured to exist but never seen, like the yeti.
We lived in a suburb east of Los Angeles, and my family was pretty much white bread transplanted midwesterners. However, for some reason, we were into Chinese food very early on. We went to Chinatown for dim sum when I was a little girl, and I loved it then and I love it now.
When I was old enough to venture out on my own for food, I’d go to Monterey Park and have lunch at a place that made the world’s best barbecued pork wonton soup. I learned to use chopsticks there. The place is long gone and I’ve never found another Chinese restaurant that could make that soup half as well.
For some reason, I didn’t care for pizza and spaghetti and such when I was a kid. It smelled too heavily seasoned to me. I now know that the pizza joints in my neighborhood in the 60s were kind of crummy and I wouldn’t like them now, either.
In the early 80s (when things Japanese were becoming fashionable), I discovered sushi and loved it at first bite. It’s still about my favorite meal and I have it as often as I can afford it.
When I was 5, my family went to Taiwan to visit my grandfather who was working there at the time. The one thing I remember (or at least remember remembering) having was and liking was Shark Fin dumpling. This was back in the 70’s so well before there were environmental concerns, but I do feel a bit bad about it now.
When I was 2 or 3, my mother let me eat an oyster on the half-shell.
My grandparents lived by the sea. It was always a great treat to visit them during family vacations, an exotic, huge change from the mountainous region where I grew up. My grandfather kept a large garden. They loved producing meals with ingredients from the beach and the garden.
When I was around 8, they introduced me to abalone. I liked it well enough. They also introduced me to artichokes. Such an exotic vegetable! My grandmother taught me how to peel the leaves through my teeth for the edible bits. That was pretty fun.
At last I arrived at the fabled artichoke heart. Grandma had said it was the very best part. Unfortunately, she left some other important advice unmentioned.
Being a greedy little miscreant, I popped the whole thing in my mouth and began to chew. Oh. My. God. My eyes filled with pain tears. A thousand angry bees stung my mouth. My parents would have slaughtered me on the spot if I’d spat it out, even into my napkin. So I swallowed. The swarm continued its vicious assault during a slow journey down my throat. I can still vividly recall the pain to this day.
Just then, my grandmother glanced over and immediately deduced what had happened. I don’t think I ever saw her laugh that hard again. 