Tuesday, November 02, 2004

A list of strange foods that some guy has eaten. Hachi no ko reminded me of a certain Simpsons episode. Here's my own list:

Reindeer - it's venison, what did you expect? Meat was an interesting dark red color though, even when well done. Had this somewhere in Germany.
Horse - don't recall this being much different than beef in either taste or texture. Had it in a stew, in Belgium, whence cometh French fried potatoes which, when done "right" (i.e. a la flamande) are actually cooked in rendered horse fat and apparently taste positively righteous.
Frog's legs - yeah, they taste like chicken. Had 'em in Chicago.
Goat - ate this curried in a West Indian restaurant in London with Rob Harrison on the occasion of some birthday or other. Tastes (surprise, surprise) like mutton.
Alligator - tastes like (tough) chicken. Not bad. Philips' Seafood, Baltimore.
Jellyfish (raw) - small threads of chewy gelatinous stuff. At a top-notch Chinese restaurant in Rockville, MD, in the company of a Hong Kong-Chinese guy who called two days in advance to order the meal; none of the dishes are on the regular menu.
Tigerlily buds - same restaurant, same meal as the jellyfish. Lightly braised in oyster sauce, I think. Very good.
Sea cucumber - eaten raw at a restaurant in Hong Kong. Sliced thin, served with equally thin slices of hot red and green chilis. Near transparent, slightly brownish color. Slightly chewy. Pretty good.
Chicken's feet - also in Hong Kong (same lunch), served in a disconcertingly sweet black bean sauce. Sort of like stringy, near-meatless chicken wings. Not really to my taste.
Tripe - actually pig, I think. Boiled for a long time, but served cold, garnished with onions. Had this in Tokyo. Pretty good.
Sea urchin - not sure this really counts; it was in the sauce on an appetizer at the W hotel in Atlanta. Uhh, it wasn't horrible. Quite tasty in fact.
Caviar (various) - Sturgeon, salmon and flying fish. Caviar is an acquired taste. If you like it, as I do, it's great. If not, there's not much you can say.
Eel - pretty pedestrian, I suppose. Have tried it hot-smoked (on a Danish cruise liner on the overnight route from Harwich to Hamburg) and poached (various sushi restaurants). Eh - it's OK.
"Variety meats" - a nice euphemism for various internal organs of meat animals. I've certainly (and knowingly) eaten kidney, liver, heart and brain of cow, and - honestly - various parts of chicken that I don't even know what they were. The former (the cow parts) were all in England (hence I can't donate blood here in the US now); the chicken parts were all served as yakitori in a couple of Tokyo dining establishments (where I also had grean tea and black sesame ice creams which were very good)
Bivalve molluscs - catch-all term for the oysters & clams I've eaten raw. These are pretty mainstream, but still not for everyone. I really love raw oysters. The stories about oysters being an aphrodisiac are not quite true; it is true however, that oyster-eaters make better lovers. After all, they say, if you'll eat a raw oyster, you'll eat anything. Ba-dum-bum.

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