<p>^ [YouTube</a> - As raw as sushi gets … eatin’ it alive](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTqpOwdWwKs&feature=related]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTqpOwdWwKs&feature=related)</p>
<p>We went to a country cantina in a small town outside of Cordoba, Spain where no English was spoken. My wife ordered a something beef dish which she was able to figure out from the menu. Our waitress tried to indicate what she was ordering using gestures-didnt do the same for the chicken my son and I ordered.</p>
<p>When it came to the table the dish turned out to be calves hooves/ankles which was a gelatinous mess. BUT, the gravy was delicious and we shared our chicken with her.</p>
<p>We left a very generous tip because our waitress indeed tried to steer her away from the choice.</p>
<p>Many of the foods suggested here are just too exotic to make them truly disgusting. I mean, you expect to be grossed out to some degree by offerings in rural Asia but not when you’re sitting down to dinner at the local neighborhood eatery. I still think bluefish marsala is the winner. It offers the right amount of familiarity in a combination that is revolting.</p>
<p>Live baby octopus…OOOOOOOOOOO MMMMMMMMM GGGGGGGGGGGGGG</p>
<p>Back in the 80s, I taught English at a Japanese factory (in the U.S.) At he end of the year the class took me to a Japanese restaurant where I gagged on:</p>
<p>Uni (oo-nee)–the Japanese name for the edible part of the Sea Urchin. While colloquially referred to as the roe (eggs), uni is actually the animal’s gonads (which produce the milt or roe). Uni ranges in color from rich gold to light yellow, and has a creamy consistency that some love and is off-putting to others. (H told me it was “eggs”–I just now found out it was “gonads.”)</p>
<p>I’d never been to Japan and had never eaten any kind of sushi. (Lucky I had H with me). After they’d finished off a boatload of sushi, the guys asked me if I wanted a steak. I thought they were all ordering steaks, so I said OK. . .then out came ONE steak for ME. I was mortified–they had been watching me eat and could tell that I didn’t like “their” food.</p>
<p>I’m Polish and one of my grandma’s specialties was Czarnina (duck blood soup). It is a sweet soup–usually served with prunes or raisins. Most of the grandchildren had been tricked into eating it–it is dark brown and their parents told them it was “chocolate soup.” I wasn’t fooled–it didn’t smell like chocolate, and I never tried it.
I spent a couple years in Africa and the most exotic thing I had was 1/2 a caterpillar–cooked with sauce and washed down with kool aid. It tasted like leaves. I didn’t like it enough to eat the other half.</p>
<p>Note to self: When traveling outside US, pack white bread & Skippy just in case.</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>maysixxmom, that is actually a good idea. I packed some granola bars and snacks for my D when she went to China, and she was very grateful. Whatever she and her teammates did not finish was given away to local schoolchildren who were happy to recieve gifts of “American food”.</p>
<p>I like the gifting aspect of that! After reading/gagging on this thread I realize I have a very bland palate…me the lover of all things gory & bloody - just don’t want to EAT them.</p>
<p>(On a side note: they re-made Friday the 13th? You just shouldn’t mess with a classic.)</p>
<p>atomom—when either H or I have a birthday, our big treat is sushi and live Uni is the highlight. Our sushi chef serves it with just a tough of lemon in its own shell. Even the Japanese prefer Uni from the waters off of Santa Barbara. But man o man the live stuff can be EXPENSIVE.</p>
<p>Reading these posts, I think I have regressed to a 4 year old fussy eater-maybe I’ll become a vegetarian-or maybe just give me peanut butter.</p>
<p>I vote for a tie between fruit bat soup and live octopus. Yuck!</p>
<p>From Post #31 by FindAPlace:
</p>
<p>As for Dutch Babies, these big souffle-like pastry puffs have long been my kids’ favorite sleepover breakfast. They are made of equal parts egg, flour and milk, blended and baked in a generously buttered pan. They rise to impressive heights in the oven and deflate with a sizzle to the pained chant “I’m melting…melting…melting” (a la the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz) when doused with fresh-squeezed lemon juice (from the lemon held aloft). Sprinkle liberally with confectioner’s sugar and serve. Our recipe comes from a kids’ cookbook–it never occurred to me that their name could be thought offensive…but now that you mention it, I can see how it would conjure up the dead baby jokes…</p>
<p>I am fairly willing to try different foods - love Indian, Thai etc. I do have a basic rule - if it has been alive, it has to be dead, and cooked. Oh, and not slimy. </p>
<p>The live baby octopus - ugh.</p>
<p>swimcatsmom, I heard that many “ethnic” foods sold here have been adapted to our American tastes.</p>
<p>I’m not getting why bluefish marsala is so disgusting. For bluefish I don’t think a fussy wine-based sauce is necessary. It’s really best fresh off the grill, but I don’t think it’s *that *weird. Icky might be something like peanut butter and mayo sandwiches.</p>
<p>I ate squid served in the same manner as in the octopus video when I was in Hakodate, Japan. The actual eating was very uneventful; you move your mouth so much when you chew that I didn’t really feel it moving. The parts I didn’t like were: 1. picking which one in the tank they should kill for me and 2. the fact that this expensive and memorable squid had no taste. I liked it less than the yummy dollar-a-piece squid sushi I got in the department store food hall. But everybody in the restaurant had left their tables to see if the gaijin girl was actually going to eat the moving squid, so I had to keep eating!</p>
<p>Oh, hey, live octopus is just sushi, as fresh as possible. Tiny little thing, and they chopped it up, put it in sauce, and handed it over to eat, still wiggling. Mine was cheap-a make shift stand by the shore, on a day trip from Seoul. There is a certain amount of proving oneself NOT the wimpy foreigner. </p>
<p>Yes, picking what should be killed for you is a distressing idea. Guilin, in southern China is, or at least was in my day a Chinese gourmet paradise. Puppies in cages, and a variety of animals that could be picked for your dinner. One, the pangolin, I later learned is an endangered species. Tofu was far more appealing.</p>
<p>H went to Japan. He eats sushi (calls it bait) and we’ve both tried octopus (very dead but tough). It was really hot and humid and he was thirsty, but he had wandered off onto a side street where everything was written in Japanese only. He saw a drink stand and pointed to a picture on the menu of a green drink that he thought looked like the most refreshing thing on the menu. Mistake! He said is was disgusting–probably seaweed & tofu and who knows what else, but it was was warm, very sour, and quite unappetizing, especially when you’re looking to cool off. H said he stopped at the next place he could find for a Coke (and he rarely will drink a coke willingly).</p>
<p>The only sushi I like is non-raw sushi. (yeah, I know, an oxymoron) but it does exist. Sushi crab, shrimp, eel and octopus is first par cooked. And it’s delicious!</p>
<p>
Depends where you eat. There is a Thai restaurant in the nearest largish city to us (100 miles away) that is a small locally Thai owned ‘Mom & Pop’ type restaurant and seems very authentic to us (we have been to Thailand). Not a fancy place at all. The Asian chains I have been to are definitely not at all authentic as far as Thai food is concerned and not like any Chinese food I have had outside of the USA. I have yet to find a Chinese restaurant here I really consider to be Chinese. Our local Chinese restaurants are very bland and everything tastes the same. My exposure to Chinese food previously was in the London Soho area which I believe is fairly authentic. Indian food is enormous in the UK (where I am from). When we first moved here there were no Indian restaurants anywhere - not even the 100 mile drive away. Now there are a couple (100 miles away). The food is much less spicy that I was used to but has the flavors. If i were not so lazy I would cook more Indian food myself as I used to in the past.</p>
<p>I don’t think I am an American wimp, unwilling to try adventuresome foreign unusual dishes…it goes farther than that, I used to cater, and after preparing any animal for 100+ people, Cheerios sounds good for me. Once after shelling 1000 prawns, I had no interest in shrimp cocktail for years- nothing grossed me out, per se, I just lost interest in the meat after touching it and handling it so much!!! After reading all 10 pages, PBJ is sounding appealing.</p>
<p>I cannot fathom going to the Chinese market and seeing the critters live, definitely not appetizing</p>