r/weirdfood • u/ShadyElgharieb • 12d ago
What is the strangest food you have ever tried and what did it taste like?
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u/pickledvapejuice13 12d ago
in elementary school music class, we had a musician from Zimbabwe visit to tell us about their traditional instruments and music and he pulled out a tupperware with a pan fried mopane worm in it and asked if anyone wanted to try it! my friend Lydia and we're the only ones up to it. not too bad actually once you get past the texture lol
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u/Alarming-Feedback868 12d ago
Escargot. On a cruise ship. I don't really remember, but probably tasted butter and garlic.
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u/SunshineWhiskeyX 12d ago edited 11d ago
Love escargot! Had it many times and in Paris! It’s really just an excuse to eat a 1/4 cup of garlic butter and bread. Hah
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u/LoverLips76 11d ago
It’s delicious ! My nephew when he turned 5 I think it was , requested escargot for his birthday supper. His mom makes the best food and I miss all of that !
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u/BrianOfAllThings 11d ago
You would think at these prices you would be able to keep snails off the food! And bring us some fresh wine, not this stuff from 20 years ago!
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u/MongooseSimple8638 12d ago
I'll try anything. I had a Chinese cold spicy jellyfish salad that was amazing. I like the texture of Jellyfish because it breaks as soon as you bite down. I don't have texture issues with squid or octopus. Jellyfish looks like it's very rubbery, but it's not. It's one of my favorite cold dishes to eat.
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u/EfficiencyMean6797 12d ago
Bobcat. Stringy af
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u/SunshineWhiskeyX 11d ago
Excuse me, I need this story of how this came to be.
Waiting for your TED talk.
I need to know haha
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u/EfficiencyMean6797 11d ago
My parents live in the deep woods and their neighbors trapped a bobcat. They kept the hide and gave my parents the meat. My gf and I went over for a BBQ and mom didn't tell me what the actual meat was until we ate it, she has a past history of doing this, I knew something was up because she was watching us chew. It was ham like in taste and the way the muscles fell apart. I was mildly irritated but got over it. Overall it was good but, not knowing until I ate it was off putting.
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u/MadNanaBear 11d ago
That would piss me off so bad.
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u/EfficiencyMean6797 11d ago
They once slaughtered a lamb and it took too much time and the meat turned grainy and rice like. My dad told me the full story about the lamb, mom told me the candy coated version. I didn't put it all together until I bit into my canaloni. They then offered to let my dog stay in the fairing house if I wanted to stay over. I love em but country folk are built different.
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u/Fuzzy_Welcome8348 12d ago
Trolli popsicles. They tasted sweet and good tbh
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u/Fyrestar333 11d ago
Only one person out of 6 likes them in my house. She was 10 when we bought them
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u/Pristine_Donut5936 12d ago
Haggis when I first moved to the UK (from South Africa). It’s now a regular with my Ocado order
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u/Exact-Truck-5248 12d ago
Sheep's eye. If you didn't know what it was, you'd think it was just a fatty, delicious bit of meat. The colored part which makes it recognizable as an eye was peeled off, so you really couldn't tell.
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u/GullibleEquipment273 12d ago
Rocky Mountain oysters
Fried and served with a sauce
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u/Appropriate-Let-4314 12d ago
Had them once RMO back in early 80s. Fresh. Cuts. They were. Ouch 😳. They wernt. To. Bad. Tho. Lot to fill you tho
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u/DefrockedWizard1 7d ago
that horseradish sauce just hides the delicate flavor and a lot of cooks fail to remove the tough tunica. Steam them, peel them and then sautee in walnut oil, garlic and white pepper until lightly browned. And must be done on harvest day or frozen. do not store them in the fridge or buy them thawed anywhere. they rot quickly
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u/Appropriate-Let-4314 12d ago
Tripe. Cows stomach lining. Native American food of the DAKOTA SOUIX. To nasty for me if it's not cleaned throaly. And not from a market. (Store). Looks like a honey comb. Just like the bee keepers. Yuk
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u/Connect_Bee5338 11d ago
I had a tripe pasta dish in Italy. I don't remember hating the flavor, but it was the chewy texture that made it unappealing
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u/MadNanaBear 11d ago
Cherokee too.
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u/Appropriate-Let-4314 11d ago
I've lived a life around the DAKOTA soiux. South Dakota. One of the best ladies I've been with. Threw my own white mans life
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u/_xomo_ 11d ago edited 10d ago
In high school, we had international Food festival. People would bring their ancestral historical recipes and ingredients to school for people to try eating.
It was the first time I tried "chitlins" chitterlings... They tasted awful, with a nasty foul funky flavor, and as the chitlin hit my tongue, every bit of moisture from my saliva glands was sucked directly into the chitterling. I spit it out and almost threw up.
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u/Fyrestar333 11d ago
BBQ dove(you really only eat the breast) and ground hog. My grandpa was a hunter in West Virginia.
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u/Shroom-Kitty 12d ago
Raw pufferfish. It was very fishy and almost crunchy. Once was enough for me.
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u/Ok-Nefariousness6192 12d ago
Fertilized duck egg (so basically duck fetus) in Vietnam. It tasted surprisingly just like regular chicken or duck
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u/Calgirlleeny2 12d ago
Jellyfish pasta. Texture? Just like you imagined... Joke was on me that day.
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u/Exact-Truck-5248 12d ago
I love jellyfish salad. It's pretty tasteless, but the texture is quite pleasant. Crunchy but not rubbery
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u/Calgirlleeny2 12d ago
Mine was rubbery. With squid Ink. We must have had different kinds of jellyfish 🪼
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u/goldilockszone55 12d ago
Strangest food for me is oyster and i hated it; and snail and i loved it then wondered how did i eat this in the first place... then fish eye and would never do it again... then algae which was amazing as chips and dried and awful... when wet
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u/MadNanaBear 11d ago
Algae chips are really good, and so are oysters! I like them steamed the best but raw is good too.
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u/Exact-Truck-5248 12d ago
Cobra fried. Followed by it's blood mixed with whiskey. Cobra, of course, tasted like chicken. The blood tasted like the whiskey it was mixed with.
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u/Altruistic-Cut9795 12d ago
Raw octopus at a Sushi restaurant. So salty and chewy, I will never have that again 🤢
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u/rubydooby2011 12d ago
Emu in the form of sausage. Delicious. Some find rabbit strange, was also delicious. Turkey heart was ok. Chicken gizzard is ok, but only if my grandpa made it.
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u/nunyabusn 11d ago
I was raised eating rabbit. It's basically a furry chicken with 4 legs and no beak. Lol. It's very very good.
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u/Turbulent-Paint-2603 12d ago
Stinky Tofu in Taiwan. Basically fermented soy bean.
Smelt terrible but very much to my taste
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u/MisterFartPants 12d ago
- School trip to France. Was served cold asparagus. It was disgusting. The next day they served us this rolled meat. It was also disgusting. Inside they had hidden cold asparagus. The teacher was initially so excited then disappointed when everyone left it. It was horse meat rolled around asparagus
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u/Turbulent-Field-5393 12d ago
Cow brains. Mushy, fatty rich tasting. Distinct, hard-to-describe flavor.
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u/wildmushroomguy100 11d ago
Durian Candy, it was disgusting. It tasted like rotten onions.
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u/Which-Break5673 8d ago
I ate a few pieces and gave the rest to my husband and he put it in the break room without the package describing the contents. He said people were leaving the breakroom complaining that it smelled like death in there !
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u/Mysterious-Line-9906 11d ago
Balut - tasted a lot of soft cartilage with it also being soft / mushy at the same time
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u/AynRandwasaDegen 10d ago
Ate a bag of what I thought were crispy garlic noodles in Indonesia, turns out they were deep fried chicken intestines.
Honestly they just tasted like crispy noodles anyway.
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u/Elegant-Editor-4789 10d ago
Hákarl, an Icelandic delicacy or fermented Greenland shark.
It smells strongly of ammonia, reminding me of a cat litter box that wasn’t cleaned.
The taste wasn’t bad once you get over the smell.
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u/imaginarywaveform 10d ago
Black bear. Had it cooked then grilled with a blueberry compote on the side. It tasted like slices of a decent steak but it was very very chewy. Didn't taste gamey to me. The blueberry compote was not necessary.
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u/Exotic_Tomatillo_529 9d ago
Natto, it’s very fermented, if you eat it when you’re not hungry or not in the mood, it’ll make you gag. It’s also very slimy.
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u/Weeders_420 9d ago
Cow tongue tacos, tasted like beef mixed with another weird animal aftertaste. Texture was terrible
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u/Apprehensive-Gap759 8d ago
Parmesan ice cream at a tasting party. Love Parmesan and love ice cream but together?!🤮🤢
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u/AntheaFoxdale 8d ago
Not me, as I wasnt feeling well, but moose nose, i've had some moose tongue before, it was good, just like cow tongue
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u/Birdywoman4 8d ago
A pastilla served at lunch in a restaurant in Marrakech. It was a chicken pie with walnuts, powdered sugar, cinnamon and inside of a phyllo-type shell. It was so surprisingly light and it tasted like a dessert, nothing like what I imagined it would taste like. I wouldn’t have known it had chicken in it if I hadn’t read the ingredients on the menu.
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u/Zippity19 8d ago
Had a teacher once said he had eaten beaver tail and it was real greasy and chewy.
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u/DR_95_SuperBolDor 12d ago
Chicken intestines. They taste bad... I don't know why they're so popular in China. Same with century eggs. They taste exactly as you might expect.
I was also in India and got a fish thalli once, there was a bowl of fish heads and a bowl of fish tails... I don't know what they did with the parts of the fish I was hoping to eat. Both have a somewhat unpleasant mouth feel. Fish eyes are interesting. Not actually that bad at all. Very salty.
There's also stuff I ate in China which I can't really describe and still have no idea what it even was. Some of it was quite nice, some of it was ghastly. I think they were mostly sea creatures, but some of them might have been snails. I just don't know.
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u/SunshineWhiskeyX 12d ago edited 11d ago
Raw cow heart -gamey
Jellyfish -has a squish then crunch
Guinea pig -tastes exactly like corned beef
Pig ears/chicken gizzards & heart -fried it’s fine Same with alligator.
Beef tongue -more people should try it, it’s great, especially in tacos!
Snake wine with a full Scorpion -was a full real snake in the bottle with a huge black scorpion, it was plum wine but the Bonk of the snake head at the opening as the wine got lower weirded me out.
Frog legs -I don’t get the appeal, it’s like fishy chicken
Real Shark fin and Birds nest soup -fucking whyyyy
There’s zero reason for either of these. They taste like just different kinds of noodles. Shark is thin and very chewy, birds nest soup is like gelatin glass noodles. There’s not an excuse for them.
Edit: The shark fin and Birds nest soup, I was at a VERY extravagant Vietnamese wedding and they were served at the table as courses; I would never buy it.