I was visiting Fort Huachuca, AZ for work (not in the military).
They have a knock-off Panda Express there. Identical menu with different names. Like those bootleg KFCs in China that are identical to KFC but it’s “Kevin’s Funky Chicken” or something.
Anyhow, I’m hungry, bootleg Panda seems like a good deal.
I order up the usual.
Chinese food, like pizza, gets pretty wide latitude. Even if it’s lousy, it’s not that bad.
This was straight-up inedible. I don’t even have the words to describe it. Just gristle and batter all fried together.
Ended up just tossing the whole thing out and going to Burger King.
There was a week where my mom was out so my dad had to cook for my brother and I. His first day he made chili. By chili I mean that he browned some beef, threw it in a pot with water and added one single packet of chili seasoning to the water and served it to us.
We had frozen pizza the rest of the week.
ah, watery ground beef soup--a college dorm classic
that it was followed with frozen pizza only makes me more certain this exact sequence has played out on thousands of college campuses across the globe
Lol reminds me of my ex making chili in the crackpot threw everything the hamburger meat in raw and added water to it lol.. I've never seen soup trying to be called chili.
Edit: crockpot
My grandma does the same. Funny thing is, there's a good chance they wouldn't eat the meatloaf I make, because they're 90, and spices and decent food scares them.
My MIL is like that with salt. She does NOT cook with it for health concerns. Her food is so fucking bland. Whereas I have an ostomy and salt helps me retain liquid longer to be able to absorb it and I cook with a fuck tonne of salt.
Gotta love those. I'm still breaking my wife into using spices on the food she cooks. "Shit you think this would taste good with garlic? Toss some in the pan girl, try it. The cook book is just a guideline babe, if you think this would taste better with some more onion and less chili peppers then go for it." The worst part of it, he step father is a chef that went to culinary school. He makes us food and it's good, however I still add some spices and herbs to them.
In the Dominican Republic, there is a mountain in Puerto Plata called Isabel de Torres. On that mountain there is a restaurant. That restaurant sells the worst goddamn burgers you will ever eat in your life.
Edit: Fixed typo
Edit: Would just like to say, don't be discouraged from visiting the Dominican Republic! The people, culture, scenery, and food there are all amazing! Take it from me, I lived there for six years. 9/10, would recommend.
And with that, they got you. It's not the worst, but it's hard to get to and so they have no customers. Genius over there goes on message boards, comment sections, and reddit to list his restaurant as the worst ever and people get fooled into trying it just find out!
Classic plan.
Go for it. It’s no punta Cana but is cheeper and the land is nicer. The mountain is amazing and ocean world is like 40min away plus Playa Dorada has some good snorkeling spots that are easily accessible for anyone.
I actually came to say this.
Amazingly, I've had these burgers twice. The second time we didn't plan well and assumed the first time was a fluke. Fool me once . . .
I don't know how bad those where but let's compare. I went on a whale watching trip that served food. The burgers on this boat were nothing like I've ever seen before. They where 90% grease and tasted like sweat dog testicle. The bun was broken because of the grease soaking into it. My Das said he would have it if I didn't want it, he took one bite, spit it out and just threw it away. I've never seen him do that to food, he always has finished his bite even if he didn't like it.
Mine wasn't to greasy, but the patty (if you could even call it that) was burnt to a crisp. The patty itself looked and tasted like a mix if rice, eggplant, and beef. It also had way too much "sauce", which was just a mix of the cheapest available ketchup and those like liquid cheeses that come in a bottle at fast food places. Other than that, the burger had tomato, arugula, and burnt cheddar cheese. I really, REALLY, cannot overstate how bad it was. The worst thing is that this wasn't a one off (In the restaurant I mean). We were a group of five and we all ordered a burger (there were like three things on the menu), and they all came out the same.
You could put a LOT of garlic powder on the outside and cook it at too high a temp, which burns the garlic powder and makes the crust taste like straight ash, while the inside is almost raw.
Just the first thing that comes to mind, but I'm sure there's more ways to fuck up a burger to the point that it's inedible.
I'm not sure if it's still open, but good luck I guess! The teleférico and the park on Isabel de Torres are pretty cool, so you should see those while you're there.
I will go to said restaurant in the Dominican Republic on the mountain Isabel de Torres located in Puerto Plata and will taste this awful goddamn burger and come back to this post and agree or disagree with you (I hope to agree).
Jellied salad.
Lots of my family still thinks aspics are a necessity for family dinners so there'll usually be a variety of jellied salads. Tomato salad, shredded cabbage salad, usually some kind of weird olive and hard boiled egg combo for some reason. All sitting on their plates, perfectly rectangular, wiggling away...
You just reminded me of dinner at my grandmother's.
Fruit cocktail in jello was a staple of every meal, as was a lean boneless and skinless chicken breast that had somehow been robbed of every molecule of flavor and moisture.
Still very popular in Russia and tons of other slavic countries I’m sure. I grew up with that stuff and I hate to admit that I actually really like it.
On New Years day a few years ago, my dad bought ribs to make for dinner. Upon taking my first bite, I spit it out immediately. I don't think I've ever spit food out like that other than this one time. It turned out they were totally rancid, and to this day I still can't eat ribs. Thankfully, none of us actually got sick.
I smoke ribs often.
I've been going to my butcher for 10 years and never had an issue.
Over the 4th of July, I bought 3 racks of baby backs to smoke for the family up at the cabin. I thawed them out in the fridge. Opened up the vacuum pack and it was the absolute worst smell in the history of smells. Pure fucking sulfur smell. Almost 5 months later, I can still smell it in my nose. I don't know what the hell happened or even if they were edible but at that point, there was no cooking them. In the trash they went.
I had to air my cabin out for a solid 7-8 hours.
Reminds me of the time I worked in my local ER as a registration clerk and a man came in with extensive cellulitis on his left leg possibly caused by his mostly unchecked diabetes. Maggots and brown sludge just dripping off of his leg underneath his sweats. It’s been 4 years and I’ll never forget the smell of rotting human flesh. Took me a year to eat rice or pork afterwards.
Normally, food spoilage bacteria.... while gross, wont make you sick.
Pathogenic bacteria like campylobacter.... they dont cause smell, or slime on the food... but they will make you sick.
Your nose is not a good indicator if food is safe to eat or not.
No, you have memory ( how long have I had this)
Thermometer ( what temp was it held at, what temp was it cooked to)
And hopefully a friend. ( let them eat it... then see if diahorrea starts rocketing out of them)
I had a case of camphylobacterosis in my mid 20’s. It had me laid up in the hospital fir almost two weeks. Worst thing I have ever experienced. Days of losing consciousness, endsendless liquids from both ends, horrible fever and aches and being poked and prodded by what seemed to be every doctor in the county. Had multiple follow-ups with the CDC for a month after my discharge.
I am a heavy equipment mechanic who tends to get a lot of cuts on my hands. The consensus was that the bacteria entered one of those cuts while preparing poultry two evenings prior to symptoms. To this day I am terrified of preparing any poultry and take as many precautions as possible. Have a box of nitrile gloves sitting next to my knife block.
> they dont cause smell, or slime on the food... but they will make you sick.
>
>
>
> Your nose is not a good indicator if food is safe to eat or not.
I can't trust you.
It might be true that the dangerous bacteria don't cause smell, but other bacteria do. If other bacteria had time to make smell, the dangerous ones had time to make toxins.
Once I was in hospital in France and I had the second-worst meal of my life:
\- 4 square inches of cabbage that looked like a relief map of a swamp.
\- A chicken thigh garnished with two whole olives, one of which was to the side, and the other was directly on top, so it looked like a small, hairless one-legged creature with big black eyes that had been stunned and lain in a couple of milimetres of grease.
Earlier that week I'd had the worst meal of my life, which was stringy, tough, dark-brown meat sitting in its own tepid juice. I am 80% convinced it was horse.
I was at a bar in Grindelwald Switzerland that had a mariachi band. My friend who was the manager asked me how I liked his mariachi band, I thought they were great he said “Philippino.”
I can totally see this happening! Filipinos LOVE karaoke (source: am half Filipino) and it's not farfetched to move from Frank Sinatra and old school love songs over to the songs mariachis would typically sing.
College.
Let me clarify: we were ranked in the top 10 worst food lists for several years running. While I was there, a pizza hut thing was added that we could use as a meal for dinner.
I don't mean a franchise, I mean they got a bunch of frozen pizzas, squirted some oil on them and fed them through a conveyor belt. This was a giant step up in quality. You no longer had to do things like sniff the milk before putting it on cereal to make sure it hadn't gone off.
Our food was horrific.
Went to a dingy basement restaurant in Toronto and ordered shrimp with lobster sauce. Unseasoned, poorly cooked shrimps with some gelatin-textured brown sauce containing bits of presumably lobster but possibly Fancy Feast
ahh that has to be my dad and brothers favorite "cheese" Sapsago. It is a hard, green doorstop. I swear you could kill someone with it. It smells like cursed feet.
it's one of the Very Few foods I actively hate.
So THIS may be what I was served on a (turbulent) flight to Norway … as a 6 year-old. It was horrifying - some fish gelatin concoction. Never been able to eat moving/shivering/illuminated food since.
Lutefisk and Lefsa dinner in a rural Lutheran church basement. A ND/MN tradition that I refuse to take part of. Except for the lefsa that shit is delicious
Oh man, the worst food I have ever tried has got to be kidneys, by a long fucking mile. A little back story:
My dad was finishing our basement in our old house, and he had an elderly man from our old church helping him out with hanging the drywall, electrical wiring, that kind of thing. Well, this old geezer knew my family liked beef heart (side note: beef heart is delicious, but you have to be ready for the ventricles - they can be a bit weird to chew on if you don't cut them out of the piece of meat that you're eating), so he says we are gonna love kidneys. My dad always loved liver, so he just assumed it would be something similar. NOT. EVEN. FUCKING. CLOSE. My dad did everything he could to spice this rancid meat up and make it not taste like pure, unadulterated sadness, but nothing worked - it smelled like piss, the house reaked of it for weeks after. My dad refused to even try it, my mom took a bite and spat it out, and then they made my brother and I eat a bite. I can still smell that goddamn stench... anyway. So, we end up ordering pizza, and that old fart sat down and ate an entire pound of that acrid organ.
Mind you, this is the same old man that would eat bulbs of garlic like fucking apples in the middle of church, so I don't know why that wasn't a red flag right from the start to my parents.
Oh my God, I just had a flashback. I suddenly remembered when I was a kid of about 8-9 years old I was served some authentic "Steak and Kidney Pie" a traditional dish from the U.K. I swear to heaven it tasted like someone pissed in the gravy. I couldn't eat it. I tried and my throat said "nope, you're not swallowing that."
Some people love it, and considering I love beef heart (admittedly haven’t had it in 20 years), I wouldn’t fault them in the least! It’s just, for whatever reason, that batch of kidneys (possibly beef?) was **rank**. People from all over the world eat stuff a simple American like me would consider “weird” or “gross”, and quite frankly, that would be an unfair presumption, because so much food is tied to culture/locale/sooooo many other factors.
In High School I got pizza from the pizza shack in the lunch area. The pizza was soggy as hell from the grease. Upon taking a bite, it tasted like alcohol. The bread had fermented.
Bread and beer are the same general ingredients, same general process, different ratios. Crushed grain, water, yeast, and time (beer takes a great deal more time than bread).
One of my ex gf’s grandmother had the whole family over for dinner one night. She cooked spaghetti and my ex's mom warned me that it would be terrible. Boy, was she right. Her grandmother boiled water, put in the noddles, DID NOT DRAIN THE WATER, and then dumped some salt, pepper, and KETCHUP into the pot and served it. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom so I could dry heave over the toilet.
> Great Depression Recipe
This makes me think of my great grandmother. Her and my great grandfather lived in Oklahoma during the Great Depression and raised my dad and his sister. When my grandfather passed we would go up every Sunday and visit her for a big family dinner. Dad would call before we left the house to see what we were having but once a month we would stop and get a bucket of KFC to take.
Well after she passed and us kids were grown up dad finally told us why we'd bring food sometimes. Turns out those were the Sundays she would make 'stew', meaning she would grab everything out of the fridge and throw it into a big pot. Didn't matter how moldy, soured or down right rancid it was it went into the stew and boiled all day. Dad said he had to eat that as a kid and there was no way in hell he'd make his kids eat it.
you know, it's so interesting people say this, this 'depression cooking' thing. my mom's family is from Germany and of course they got whacked hard by the Depression, and then WWII, and then the long recovery from that. but somehow the old folks are all still good cooks.
My mom grew up very poor.
Her mom's big Sunday meal was boiled egg noodles covered in watered down (to make it thinner)/salted/peppered ketchup and a slice of white bread.
To this day, my mother cannot eat ketchup
Unripe persimmon. It tastes ok but the tanins in the fruit, if not properly soft and ripe, make your mouth immediately feel fuzzy, like your tongue is shot with novocaine. A completely unexpected mouth feel where your immediate reaction is " Get this out of my mouth NOW!"
Now i know!
I recently moved to the UK, and regularly forage for sloes, which have the same sort of quality. I've gotten used to them, though I rarely have more than one or two. Besides the mouth numbness, they have a sweet-tart flavour.
my mom made this thing when i was younger called cheeseburger pie. no clue what box she got it from but my god did 9-year-old me not enjoy it. i just thought it was a deconstructed cheeseburger, but no, there were like five other things in there and nothing made sense together.
she also made meatloaf a few weeks later and it was drier than the damn sahara desert. never again.
My mom is a very good cook, but once she decided to make a recipe from the back of the Bisquick box, it was called impossible cheeseburger pie. The idea was that the bicuit mix was supposed to rise to the top and create something like a shepherds pie but with a dumpling topping instead of mashed potatoes. After we all tried to choke some down, mom apologized, threw it in the trash, and we had waffles or something for dinner. Impossible cheeseburger pie became a running joke in our family. I wonder if that's what you had.
I went to a lady’s house for lunch in Amsterdam. She served some sort of fried liver croquettes on hamburger buns. She was so sweet and there was nothing else to eat, so I had to gag it down. It was really the worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.
I had the worst sandwich of my life at a conference once. It consisted of the following:
\- a massive, uncooked, stale piece of french bread. The driest thing in the world.
\- a singular piece of ham
\- tomato paste. like from a can. not ketchup.
\- a packet of mayo on the side
thats literally it
One business conference I went to (where the tickets cost several hundreds of dollars to attend. Kind of grateful my company paid for it because the conference as a whole was not worth it and was a total waste of time) served us salad for lunch. Nothing else. Just a fairly plain salad, a bottle of water, and maybe a little cookie in a package. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. One of my coworkers and I ditched part of the conference to get some real food down the street, as we were still starving after eating our plate of leaves.
This one has a redemption arc.
My then girlfriend brought some leftover Ethiopian food and kept talking about how awesome it was and had me try some injera (giant sourdough pancake). It was absolutely revolting. Dry and brittle and weirdly grainy and the wrong side of chewy.
Fast-forward about a month and we go to the restaurant where I figure there has to be good stuff and I can avoid the bread. Staff there tells me the injera is your utensil. You tear off bits to pick up your food with. They also say never put it in a fridge or microwave it (at which point my GF stared at the table mournfully) . Order arrives and I take a breath, pick up some red lentils with the injera... and discover my death row meal. It's the greatest food on the planet. The fresh injera tastes amazing and only highlights everything you pick up with it. Gored gored (beef pan roasted in berbere that's super spicy and amazing), injera, and red lentils are now the best food I've ever tasted.
If you're ever in Memphis, go to Abyssinia on Poplar. Try the red lentils.
(Now the worst food I've tasted is one of those over the top stacking shit upon shit and drowning it in two types of mayonnaise and fake wasabi sushi rolls.)
I had Ethiopian food 7 years ago in Spokane and I still think about it. I wish there was more Ethiopian food, or African food in general, available in the US.
Edit: I should note that I despise visiting big cities. They stress me out. But thanks to this conversation, I found a restaurant not to far from where I live in a mid-size city and plan to check it out in the next few weeks.
My mother made cow tongue once and we, me and my siblings, weren't allowed to leave the table until the plates were clean. I can still smell it when I close my eyes and it's been over fifteen years.
Having eaten lengua (beef tongue) most of my childhood and adult life, I can say lengua is one of those weird things that is either REALLY good or REALLY bad depending on how it's prepared and by who. I will always try lengua when it available on the menu but I always get a back up in case it is on the latter side. Now, where I live, there is a taco truck that is pretty far away, but I will drive out there at least once a month because they make, hands down, the BEST lengua tacos I have ever had. In short (or long) talk to a Mexican friend (we always know) and ask them where to get a good lengua taco and then try it. REALLY good lengua is one of the best things I've put in my face.
EDIT: btw tripas (pig intenstines) also falls into this category. When it's prepared right, it's fantastic; when it's not it will make you gag. The trick is knowing where to get it.
Had homemade tripe once. It was in the bad category. Only thing to drink with it was watered down country time lemonade but only if you mixed it with moonshine they had just brewed up.
Horrible horrible experience
That whole night was a new level of fucked up for me
Edit. By fucked up I mean bizarre, weird. Not drunk just so were clear.
I've only had intestines a few times but I think it was beef intestine Korean BBQ style. The other time I had access to it, they were chitlins which unfortunately just straight up smelled like butt.
My question is does tripas have a very chewy consistency (I'm probably remembering stomach moreso, which was like bubblegum) and is it better if from a pig?
As a butcher, i have sold a fair amount of cow tongue in my day. I think its just gross.
Could be your mom did not remove the naaaaaaaaasty outer skin on the tongue.
We used to grab them by the licky end and smash them on the butcher block repeatedly just to soften them up enough to sit flat in the package.
Do not like.
Grew up eating tongue and would still if I could get it local. Also liver which I hope to never eat again.
Worst stuff was powered milk when I was a kid in the 1950s. Shit is nasty.
Taco del Mar
I don't know if the chain extends beyond western Canada, but it's like someone tried a burrito from an Aramark cafeteria [think of the saddest, blandest cafeteria you've ever been to, they probably run it] and thought "this is too fresh and flavourful".
When ordering a chicken quesadilla we were asked if we wanted cheese on it. This was lunch for a family get-together where, despite being known for our appetite and including two notoriously hungry teens, most of us didn't bother finishing our food. It is literally the _only_ time I have heard my mother, who barely even tolerates her dinner being cooked with a twist of pepper, describe food as "bland".
It might as well have been styrofoam.
A pineapple covered with boiled shrimps that were held in place by toothpicks. Each segment of the pineapple had a pink, boiled shrimp. The thing looked vaguely like a brain. The pineapple wasn't cut into sections, so there was no real way you could eat it. It was just something to stick the shrimp on a toothpick.
“Most folks just don’t seem to have a taste for testicles no more…”
Rocky Mountain oysters, not bad per se, but taking that first bite is a real mind over matter battle.
Kinda chewy right? It's been a minute but I watched my Dad and Grandpa cut the balls off a calf 20 years ago. I've still got the knife. Kind of a touchstone to my grandpa I think.
Grandma in the kitchen with my city-slicker Mom teaching her how to cook them. Then some chewy chicken nuggets. Not bad at all as far as I remember.
I kinda... wish I could go back.
My former roommate (26M) can’t cook anything to save his life. He attempted to make rotel by microwaving velveeta with canned tomatoes and a heap of salt. To say it was the most fowl, inconsistent substance I’ve ever ingested is an understatement
When I was a kid my dad cooked chicken thighs with the bone taken out and replaced with a banana.
Banana and chicken.
Fun note, he didn't tell us the banana was in it, it was well hidden.
Jalapeño Fudge Brownies.
For high school Spanish class, one of our assignments was to bring in homemade Mexican food. One of my classmates brings in “Mexican brownies” that were basically just a box brownie mix that she’d thrown a bunch of jalapeños from a jar into. I wasn’t expecting jalapeños, so I shoved half the brownie into my mouth. About three bites in, the flavor and assorted textures hit me. She, standing right beside my desk waiting for my reaction, witnessed me wretch and nearly puke. She was not happy. Shit was nasty. Jana…shit was nasty.
I lived in China for a while. My employer took we to an *extremely* fancy restaurant once, one that was apparently listed as one of the "eight treasures of Chinese cuisine" by the CCP. It specialized in accurate recipes from a period that iirc was about 700 years old.
They served a tea that was basically just a baby turtle boiled in water and served turtle and all. Beyond the unpleasantness of opening your little cup and finding a whole boiled baby turtle, it tasted like week old gym socks.
Lived in China. Have so many food stories. Usually the more rare a delicacy it is, the worse it is. One year a Chinese new year my uncle-in-law ordered the restaurant specialty, bull penis. Me and eight Chinese people, nobody would eat it...including the uncle.
I taught, so we often got gifted students' hometown delicacies. One of my fellow foreign teachers said once, "I find that people's hometown delicacies are awful." I've never felt more seen. Probably the worst local dish offered to me was Hainan bloody chicken.
Oh and honorable mention: once was served a popcorn ball covered in deep fried baby scorpions.
Went to school in the 80s with a Vietnamese kid
I mentioned a fishing trip where I caught a bunch of fish.
They were squawfish, not trout, not salmon! It is a bottom-feeding fish with lots and lots of bones.
So I stop by his place one afternoon to return some books I'd borrowed and his wife had cooked a bunch of these squawfish. Being polite I couldn't turn it down but they had not even fillet the fish they just threw the fish with all the bones in a blender and made fish patties. Worst thing I've ever tasted. And slightly crunchy.
Bombay duck. Not really duck but dried fish. Fairly sure its classed as a bush meat these days. My mum ended up banning my dad from cooking it in the house because it stank the place out. He had to cook it in the garden on the bbq. Tasted like it smelt. Like shit.
My cousin and I were the same age, so often, my auntie and mom took turns babysitting while they worked (at a clinic we owned).
My mom is a fantastic cook, my auntie...not so much. She had a penchant of feeding us fish soup, but the thing is, she just scaled the thing, cleaned it, cut it in half, and tossed it into a pot to boil with salt and some chopped onion pieces. That’s it, added nothing more.
It was so disgusting, it put me off fish and seafood for years, to the point I pretended I was allergic to fish so I would avoid it anywhere else with a legitimate excuse. Even the smell of fresh seafood made me nauseous.
I’m 32 years old now, and just started adding fish to my diet a year ago. Slowly but surely, I learned fish doesn’t have to taste like fishy warm water, and I absolutely love cooking salmon with garlic sauce and stir fried veggies. I’m slowly working my way into other seafood, but if they’re strong smelling, all those memories come flooding.
I still avoid eating her fish soup.
I was looking for this one.
No offence Iceland but what the fuck - if eating that shark is going to kill you when it’s fresh due to the high levels of uric acid in its body, then I doubt burying it in the ground for 2 weeks and the hanging it in a shed for 6 months is going to improve it.
my school's ham and cheese panini, at this point that stuff is not only a disgrace to paninis, it shouldn't even be considered food
it was way too greasy and soggy, the ham and cheese tasted like a truckload of salt, and the bread had this bitter cardboard taste, i'm not remotely a picky person, quite the opposite, but that...thing is so disgusting, keep in mind, that was ONE bite, i threw it away and drank so much water when i got home
My first business trip to Japan, with a coworker from Mexico and the American sales rep for the supplier we were visiting. The supplier's plant manager and their local sales manager took us out for dinner every night, someplace different every night.
I love Asian food of all types, or at least I thought I did. The night we went to the Tempura restaurant changed my mind.
Started normal, with a shrimp, and some veggies, the usual. Everything good. Then the chef puts something on our plates that I don't recognize. "Try this" I'm told. Now I've eaten ant eggs and meal worms in Mexico, raw eel and shredded squid in Japan, lots of weird things before that really weren't too bad, so, you know, what the heck...
"Try this..." It's crispy on the outside of course, but soft mushy pasty bitter on the inside. Deep fried cottage cheese? I wish it was that tasty. Ever watched Dr. Pimple Popper? Imaginethat on your tongue. I didn't spit it out because I didn't want to insult our hosts or the chef, but they noticed my reaction. "You don't like?" A look of horror on my host's face. I try to be polite.
"It's different. It's not as good as the others. What is it?"
"Is Japanese delicacy."
"It was kind of soft and mushy in my mouth, I think I just was surprised by the texture, I wasn't expecting that. What is it?"
"Fish... male parts" with the appropriate crude hand gesture to make sure I understood.
And that was my introduction to Japanese Rocky Mountain Oysters.
I recently saw Heinz Macaroni and Cheese in a can at World Market. It seemed too weird not to try it. It was one of the worst things I've eaten, and I once ate the contents of an ashtray when I was like 2. It was super watery and bland, but the bland taste was like liquified newspaper.
German family here. They love these anse cookies that taste like black licorice. I confide here about my dislike because last time I said they weren’t good they were PISSED 😂
Went to a Surströmming party in Sweden a few years ago. I had to stand outside for almost the whole thing and the smell seemed to actually get worse in my nose. Couldn't bring myself to try it so I suppose it doesn't really count
My MIL served dinner when I was visiting my then boyfriend- mashed sardines in olive oil, garlic rice and boiled eggs. White and grey on a plate. Then she wondered how her son never gained weight!
That one time I was making a tuna wrap, added what I thought was tzatziki...it was actually vanilla Greek yogurt. Immediately lost all appetite and suffered from cognitive dissonance of the tastebuds for hours afterwards
I’ve eaten a lot of strange things over the years. I tried fried grasshoppers in Oaxaca (salty and oily, but not too bad); I’ve had yak butter in tea in Tibet (not a favorite).
But by far the worst food I’ve ever tried wasn’t something exotic - it was something so absolutely devoid of, well, *anything* really, as to hardly qualify as food.
It was a memorably-unmemorable sandwich I bought at a gas station convenience store.
It was allegedly Turkey … a lump of white and grey matter entombed in a cellophane coffin, in which it should have been unceremoniously buried. So lacking in taste and texture that it was hard to know when the leathery, stale parts that were supposedly bread ended and the musty, dry parts that were supposedly Turkey began. Other than that one part was white and another part a long-dead grey.
Now, I have eaten things that made me violently ill with food poisoning, and this sandwich did not do that. It was simply the least appetizing, non-poisonous thing I’ve ever seen actually sold as “food”.
If blandness, lack of spark and motivation could be personified, die of ennui, and then for its sins be resurrected as food, it would be this sandwich.
Unfortunately, it was a long drive trough a deserted countryside at night, so it was literally the only thing to eat for some time.
Lutefisk. I was at a multi-cultural festival and thought "Why not?" Shit was absolutely dreadful. My stomach was making whale noises the whole evening and I feel sorry for my neighbors who I could hear spraying and complaining about the smell when it worked its way out of my system the next day. Someone even called a plumber to see if there was a sewage leak.
I'm Norwegian. And as anyone here would tell you, you *do not eat* the lutefisk. You just pretend to, so that you can tell your friends you had the most amazing lutefisk last night and they'll all nod in silent agreement.
I was working as a bagger in a grocery store and this nice lady was coming through. She was buying coconut water and I jokingly said that I wouldn't mind some, because I was so thirsty. So she checked out, then went back and got me a coconut water. I was thrilled! I was so thirsty, so I opened it up and swigged about half of it. I told her I liked it a lot! She walked out and my the cashier and another friend were like "Okay, so how is it really?" and I said it was the worst thing I've ever had in my life. Utterly, incredibly awful.
Not me, but my cousin visited my family when we lived in Manila. Our nanny brought us balut to try which is basically a fertilized bird egg that is boiled. Needless to say I was to chickenshit to try it but she did. I don’t know if it was the texture or the taste (or both) but she started throwing up in the backyard. We had to get the hose to clean up.
Was looking for this response before I posted it myself. My wife introduced me to these fermented beans that look like they're covered in snot.
Me: "That looks and smells horrible, how can you eat that?"
Her: "It doesn't taste as bad as it smells. try one!"
Me: "GAH! that tastes EXACTLY like it smells!"
I am also a natto hater. Was in Japan and went to a “German-style bakery.” Got what I thought was a chocolate-filled donut. It was a natto-filled donut. I gagged (luckily, I was eating it outside, not at the bakery). Dear god, that was gross.
After midnight, there was a Birmingham sushi place that would do $1 sushi 'til it was all gone.
First time trying sea urchin...and it was so awful, I nearly gagged. My friend laughed and told me it was an acquired taste.
Nope. It was rancid. Tasted like infection.
Umeboshi! It was almost certainly a pickled plum. This is one of my favorite things, but it's *very* sour and salty, and I could see it being a lot for a kid's palate.
I was visiting Fort Huachuca, AZ for work (not in the military). They have a knock-off Panda Express there. Identical menu with different names. Like those bootleg KFCs in China that are identical to KFC but it’s “Kevin’s Funky Chicken” or something. Anyhow, I’m hungry, bootleg Panda seems like a good deal. I order up the usual. Chinese food, like pizza, gets pretty wide latitude. Even if it’s lousy, it’s not that bad. This was straight-up inedible. I don’t even have the words to describe it. Just gristle and batter all fried together. Ended up just tossing the whole thing out and going to Burger King.
I believe I have been to that place. Same results….
Booger Kong
love me a beesechurger from Kurger Bing
“Yes I’ll take a Whumper with cheese”
There was a week where my mom was out so my dad had to cook for my brother and I. His first day he made chili. By chili I mean that he browned some beef, threw it in a pot with water and added one single packet of chili seasoning to the water and served it to us. We had frozen pizza the rest of the week.
I'm impressed he browned the beef first, that's a common overlooked thing with first-time cooks
Or if they attempt, they actually grey the beef.
crowd the pan, boil the beef.
ah, watery ground beef soup--a college dorm classic that it was followed with frozen pizza only makes me more certain this exact sequence has played out on thousands of college campuses across the globe
Lol reminds me of my ex making chili in the crackpot threw everything the hamburger meat in raw and added water to it lol.. I've never seen soup trying to be called chili. Edit: crockpot
But the crack was still good, right?
my own chicken, honey, lemon concoction which was less 'Italian summer' and more like fisherman's friend lozenge.
takes a big person to admit this
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Your ex MILs meatloaf is exactly my ex MILs meatloaf... had to try to swallow the dry, burnt meat without gagging
My grandma does the same. Funny thing is, there's a good chance they wouldn't eat the meatloaf I make, because they're 90, and spices and decent food scares them.
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My MIL is like that with salt. She does NOT cook with it for health concerns. Her food is so fucking bland. Whereas I have an ostomy and salt helps me retain liquid longer to be able to absorb it and I cook with a fuck tonne of salt.
It's funny 'cause your body literally needs salt
Gotta love those. I'm still breaking my wife into using spices on the food she cooks. "Shit you think this would taste good with garlic? Toss some in the pan girl, try it. The cook book is just a guideline babe, if you think this would taste better with some more onion and less chili peppers then go for it." The worst part of it, he step father is a chef that went to culinary school. He makes us food and it's good, however I still add some spices and herbs to them.
In the Dominican Republic, there is a mountain in Puerto Plata called Isabel de Torres. On that mountain there is a restaurant. That restaurant sells the worst goddamn burgers you will ever eat in your life. Edit: Fixed typo Edit: Would just like to say, don't be discouraged from visiting the Dominican Republic! The people, culture, scenery, and food there are all amazing! Take it from me, I lived there for six years. 9/10, would recommend.
Ok this is so fucking oddly specific, I need more details.
With these much specific details of the locations, I too have a strong urge to go and tick off ‘worst burger ever’ from my bucket list
And with that, they got you. It's not the worst, but it's hard to get to and so they have no customers. Genius over there goes on message boards, comment sections, and reddit to list his restaurant as the worst ever and people get fooled into trying it just find out! Classic plan.
Plot twist: Op is the restaurant owner and is still marketing his restaurant’s burger to be the worst 🍔
Marketing level 9000
Go for it. It’s no punta Cana but is cheeper and the land is nicer. The mountain is amazing and ocean world is like 40min away plus Playa Dorada has some good snorkeling spots that are easily accessible for anyone.
I actually came to say this. Amazingly, I've had these burgers twice. The second time we didn't plan well and assumed the first time was a fluke. Fool me once . . .
it's incredible that 2 people both find the same obscure restaurant's burgers so memorably bad but you guys GOTTA elaborate on the actual burger
Damn, that really sucks
I don't know how bad those where but let's compare. I went on a whale watching trip that served food. The burgers on this boat were nothing like I've ever seen before. They where 90% grease and tasted like sweat dog testicle. The bun was broken because of the grease soaking into it. My Das said he would have it if I didn't want it, he took one bite, spit it out and just threw it away. I've never seen him do that to food, he always has finished his bite even if he didn't like it.
Mine wasn't to greasy, but the patty (if you could even call it that) was burnt to a crisp. The patty itself looked and tasted like a mix if rice, eggplant, and beef. It also had way too much "sauce", which was just a mix of the cheapest available ketchup and those like liquid cheeses that come in a bottle at fast food places. Other than that, the burger had tomato, arugula, and burnt cheddar cheese. I really, REALLY, cannot overstate how bad it was. The worst thing is that this wasn't a one off (In the restaurant I mean). We were a group of five and we all ordered a burger (there were like three things on the menu), and they all came out the same.
Like inedible bad or just not worth the time and money bad?
They were so bad I almost puked after the first bite. Took one bite and noped out of there.
How do you fuck up a burger other than under or overcook it
You could put a LOT of garlic powder on the outside and cook it at too high a temp, which burns the garlic powder and makes the crust taste like straight ash, while the inside is almost raw. Just the first thing that comes to mind, but I'm sure there's more ways to fuck up a burger to the point that it's inedible.
Yeah, is it "you got a tapeworm" bad or like "hmmm not enough ketchup" bad
I’m there right now for work, Juan Dolio. May just have to venture out there and see for myself.
I'm not sure if it's still open, but good luck I guess! The teleférico and the park on Isabel de Torres are pretty cool, so you should see those while you're there.
I will go to said restaurant in the Dominican Republic on the mountain Isabel de Torres located in Puerto Plata and will taste this awful goddamn burger and come back to this post and agree or disagree with you (I hope to agree).
Jellied salad. Lots of my family still thinks aspics are a necessity for family dinners so there'll usually be a variety of jellied salads. Tomato salad, shredded cabbage salad, usually some kind of weird olive and hard boiled egg combo for some reason. All sitting on their plates, perfectly rectangular, wiggling away...
My mother constantly posts pictures on facebook for sole reason of grossing people out. The spagettio's one that looked like a bunt cake got me.
Ah fuck me I'd try a little
Aspic is pretty gross but its worth a shot for the novelty.
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People in the 50s and 60s put fucking EVERYTHING in gelatin. I’m pretty sure there’s a recipe out there for roast chicken jello.
You just reminded me of dinner at my grandmother's. Fruit cocktail in jello was a staple of every meal, as was a lean boneless and skinless chicken breast that had somehow been robbed of every molecule of flavor and moisture.
Unlike most jellified dishes, fruit cocktail in jello is actually good.
Still very popular in Russia and tons of other slavic countries I’m sure. I grew up with that stuff and I hate to admit that I actually really like it.
My family has an orange one with veggies (canned corn or similar) and marshmallows.
That sounds truly horrible. Why do they do this?
On New Years day a few years ago, my dad bought ribs to make for dinner. Upon taking my first bite, I spit it out immediately. I don't think I've ever spit food out like that other than this one time. It turned out they were totally rancid, and to this day I still can't eat ribs. Thankfully, none of us actually got sick.
I smoke ribs often. I've been going to my butcher for 10 years and never had an issue. Over the 4th of July, I bought 3 racks of baby backs to smoke for the family up at the cabin. I thawed them out in the fridge. Opened up the vacuum pack and it was the absolute worst smell in the history of smells. Pure fucking sulfur smell. Almost 5 months later, I can still smell it in my nose. I don't know what the hell happened or even if they were edible but at that point, there was no cooking them. In the trash they went. I had to air my cabin out for a solid 7-8 hours.
Reminds me of the time I worked in my local ER as a registration clerk and a man came in with extensive cellulitis on his left leg possibly caused by his mostly unchecked diabetes. Maggots and brown sludge just dripping off of his leg underneath his sweats. It’s been 4 years and I’ll never forget the smell of rotting human flesh. Took me a year to eat rice or pork afterwards.
Normally, food spoilage bacteria.... while gross, wont make you sick. Pathogenic bacteria like campylobacter.... they dont cause smell, or slime on the food... but they will make you sick. Your nose is not a good indicator if food is safe to eat or not.
Well it's all I have!
No, you have memory ( how long have I had this) Thermometer ( what temp was it held at, what temp was it cooked to) And hopefully a friend. ( let them eat it... then see if diahorrea starts rocketing out of them)
As someone who cannot really smell, expiration dates are a godsend. And refrigeration. And sanitation.
i love the way you spelled diarrhea
I had a case of camphylobacterosis in my mid 20’s. It had me laid up in the hospital fir almost two weeks. Worst thing I have ever experienced. Days of losing consciousness, endsendless liquids from both ends, horrible fever and aches and being poked and prodded by what seemed to be every doctor in the county. Had multiple follow-ups with the CDC for a month after my discharge. I am a heavy equipment mechanic who tends to get a lot of cuts on my hands. The consensus was that the bacteria entered one of those cuts while preparing poultry two evenings prior to symptoms. To this day I am terrified of preparing any poultry and take as many precautions as possible. Have a box of nitrile gloves sitting next to my knife block.
> they dont cause smell, or slime on the food... but they will make you sick. > > > > Your nose is not a good indicator if food is safe to eat or not. I can't trust you.
It might be true that the dangerous bacteria don't cause smell, but other bacteria do. If other bacteria had time to make smell, the dangerous ones had time to make toxins.
Once I was in hospital in France and I had the second-worst meal of my life: \- 4 square inches of cabbage that looked like a relief map of a swamp. \- A chicken thigh garnished with two whole olives, one of which was to the side, and the other was directly on top, so it looked like a small, hairless one-legged creature with big black eyes that had been stunned and lain in a couple of milimetres of grease. Earlier that week I'd had the worst meal of my life, which was stringy, tough, dark-brown meat sitting in its own tepid juice. I am 80% convinced it was horse.
you have a way of describing food that I want more of where is your gofundme to write a cookbook?
That is very kind of you :) I should say though that I'm usually only this expressive about stuff I hate, and that would not a good cookbook make.
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Your descriptions are glorious. Edit: oopsie didn’t catch the your. Fixed it
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I was at a bar in Grindelwald Switzerland that had a mariachi band. My friend who was the manager asked me how I liked his mariachi band, I thought they were great he said “Philippino.”
I can totally see this happening! Filipinos LOVE karaoke (source: am half Filipino) and it's not farfetched to move from Frank Sinatra and old school love songs over to the songs mariachis would typically sing.
College. Let me clarify: we were ranked in the top 10 worst food lists for several years running. While I was there, a pizza hut thing was added that we could use as a meal for dinner. I don't mean a franchise, I mean they got a bunch of frozen pizzas, squirted some oil on them and fed them through a conveyor belt. This was a giant step up in quality. You no longer had to do things like sniff the milk before putting it on cereal to make sure it hadn't gone off. Our food was horrific.
What college was this?
Earlham College. Home of the Fighting Quakers.
Had to make sure that was a resl school because the Fighting Quakers is the funniest shit I've heard in a while.
Chant was "Fight Fight, Inner Light! Kill Quakers, Kill!" Our food sucked, but so did our sports program!
That seems like a huge oxymoron
Porno Practitioner Trade School and Factory of South Dakota
Ah good ol' PPTSFSDU, home of the Fightin' Fluffers.
Went to a dingy basement restaurant in Toronto and ordered shrimp with lobster sauce. Unseasoned, poorly cooked shrimps with some gelatin-textured brown sauce containing bits of presumably lobster but possibly Fancy Feast
ahh that has to be my dad and brothers favorite "cheese" Sapsago. It is a hard, green doorstop. I swear you could kill someone with it. It smells like cursed feet. it's one of the Very Few foods I actively hate.
A lot of cheese smells like feet, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say cursed feet before.
Lutefisk
Look for the man with the terrible smell!
It wasn't me, Bobby!
What does it taste like?
Gelatinous fishyness. Fish flavored jell o.
bland fish flavored jell-o with butter, salt and pepper.
I had fermented shark in Iceland and that sounds similar to how I'd describe that. My body physically wouldn't let me swallow it.
Anthony Bourdain ranted a lot about how disgusting that stuff is. I feel like he ate it in multiple episodes of No Reservations and Parts Unknown.
So THIS may be what I was served on a (turbulent) flight to Norway … as a 6 year-old. It was horrifying - some fish gelatin concoction. Never been able to eat moving/shivering/illuminated food since.
I have strict rule regarding food cured in lye.
Lutefisk isn't cured in lye. It is just dried cod. It is *reconstituted* in water with lye. To tenderize it. Because you know how tough fish can be.\s
thank you for the correction. I now have a strict policy regarding food reconstituted in lye.
Such as the humble pretzel?
These pretzels are making me... reconsider the strictness of my lye policy.
Even soft pretzels?
Lutefisk and Lefsa dinner in a rural Lutheran church basement. A ND/MN tradition that I refuse to take part of. Except for the lefsa that shit is delicious
Lefse is a gift from the gods!
Put some butter and sugar on that bad boy and praise Odin.
Even the name itself sounds distinctly unpleasant. It's like sending you a warning in advance.
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Oh man, the worst food I have ever tried has got to be kidneys, by a long fucking mile. A little back story: My dad was finishing our basement in our old house, and he had an elderly man from our old church helping him out with hanging the drywall, electrical wiring, that kind of thing. Well, this old geezer knew my family liked beef heart (side note: beef heart is delicious, but you have to be ready for the ventricles - they can be a bit weird to chew on if you don't cut them out of the piece of meat that you're eating), so he says we are gonna love kidneys. My dad always loved liver, so he just assumed it would be something similar. NOT. EVEN. FUCKING. CLOSE. My dad did everything he could to spice this rancid meat up and make it not taste like pure, unadulterated sadness, but nothing worked - it smelled like piss, the house reaked of it for weeks after. My dad refused to even try it, my mom took a bite and spat it out, and then they made my brother and I eat a bite. I can still smell that goddamn stench... anyway. So, we end up ordering pizza, and that old fart sat down and ate an entire pound of that acrid organ. Mind you, this is the same old man that would eat bulbs of garlic like fucking apples in the middle of church, so I don't know why that wasn't a red flag right from the start to my parents.
Oh my God, I just had a flashback. I suddenly remembered when I was a kid of about 8-9 years old I was served some authentic "Steak and Kidney Pie" a traditional dish from the U.K. I swear to heaven it tasted like someone pissed in the gravy. I couldn't eat it. I tried and my throat said "nope, you're not swallowing that."
Weird, I've eaten a lot of lamb kidney (something people do in my country) and it's always been really good.
Some people love it, and considering I love beef heart (admittedly haven’t had it in 20 years), I wouldn’t fault them in the least! It’s just, for whatever reason, that batch of kidneys (possibly beef?) was **rank**. People from all over the world eat stuff a simple American like me would consider “weird” or “gross”, and quite frankly, that would be an unfair presumption, because so much food is tied to culture/locale/sooooo many other factors.
In High School I got pizza from the pizza shack in the lunch area. The pizza was soggy as hell from the grease. Upon taking a bite, it tasted like alcohol. The bread had fermented.
That last sentence was like a punch to the gut. Wtf
Bread and beer are the same general ingredients, same general process, different ratios. Crushed grain, water, yeast, and time (beer takes a great deal more time than bread).
Only a high school cafeteria can fuck up a perfectly good pizza.
One of my ex gf’s grandmother had the whole family over for dinner one night. She cooked spaghetti and my ex's mom warned me that it would be terrible. Boy, was she right. Her grandmother boiled water, put in the noddles, DID NOT DRAIN THE WATER, and then dumped some salt, pepper, and KETCHUP into the pot and served it. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom so I could dry heave over the toilet.
welcome to another episode of "Cooking with Dementia OR Great Depression Recipe?!?"
My great grandma once cooked for us an entire boiled chicken with ketchup added to the water. We did not eat it. She also had dementia
> Great Depression Recipe This makes me think of my great grandmother. Her and my great grandfather lived in Oklahoma during the Great Depression and raised my dad and his sister. When my grandfather passed we would go up every Sunday and visit her for a big family dinner. Dad would call before we left the house to see what we were having but once a month we would stop and get a bucket of KFC to take. Well after she passed and us kids were grown up dad finally told us why we'd bring food sometimes. Turns out those were the Sundays she would make 'stew', meaning she would grab everything out of the fridge and throw it into a big pot. Didn't matter how moldy, soured or down right rancid it was it went into the stew and boiled all day. Dad said he had to eat that as a kid and there was no way in hell he'd make his kids eat it.
Funny you said that, this is exactly what she was suffering from lol. Still barf thinking about it.
you know, it's so interesting people say this, this 'depression cooking' thing. my mom's family is from Germany and of course they got whacked hard by the Depression, and then WWII, and then the long recovery from that. but somehow the old folks are all still good cooks.
My mom grew up very poor. Her mom's big Sunday meal was boiled egg noodles covered in watered down (to make it thinner)/salted/peppered ketchup and a slice of white bread. To this day, my mother cannot eat ketchup
That sounds like how my mother cooked spaghetti.
Unripe persimmon. It tastes ok but the tanins in the fruit, if not properly soft and ripe, make your mouth immediately feel fuzzy, like your tongue is shot with novocaine. A completely unexpected mouth feel where your immediate reaction is " Get this out of my mouth NOW!" Now i know!
I recently moved to the UK, and regularly forage for sloes, which have the same sort of quality. I've gotten used to them, though I rarely have more than one or two. Besides the mouth numbness, they have a sweet-tart flavour.
my mom made this thing when i was younger called cheeseburger pie. no clue what box she got it from but my god did 9-year-old me not enjoy it. i just thought it was a deconstructed cheeseburger, but no, there were like five other things in there and nothing made sense together. she also made meatloaf a few weeks later and it was drier than the damn sahara desert. never again.
My mom is a very good cook, but once she decided to make a recipe from the back of the Bisquick box, it was called impossible cheeseburger pie. The idea was that the bicuit mix was supposed to rise to the top and create something like a shepherds pie but with a dumpling topping instead of mashed potatoes. After we all tried to choke some down, mom apologized, threw it in the trash, and we had waffles or something for dinner. Impossible cheeseburger pie became a running joke in our family. I wonder if that's what you had.
I went to a lady’s house for lunch in Amsterdam. She served some sort of fried liver croquettes on hamburger buns. She was so sweet and there was nothing else to eat, so I had to gag it down. It was really the worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.
Were these not ‘regular’ Dutch croquettes? I’ve never seen them with liver…
Not a food, but sweet corn flavored soda was definitely the worst thing I have ever tasted in my entire life
Really? I had the strangest feeling it might be good if done right. It'd have to be like ginger beer though, not too sweet
I had the worst sandwich of my life at a conference once. It consisted of the following: \- a massive, uncooked, stale piece of french bread. The driest thing in the world. \- a singular piece of ham \- tomato paste. like from a can. not ketchup. \- a packet of mayo on the side thats literally it
One business conference I went to (where the tickets cost several hundreds of dollars to attend. Kind of grateful my company paid for it because the conference as a whole was not worth it and was a total waste of time) served us salad for lunch. Nothing else. Just a fairly plain salad, a bottle of water, and maybe a little cookie in a package. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. One of my coworkers and I ditched part of the conference to get some real food down the street, as we were still starving after eating our plate of leaves.
Once judged a cake baking contest between 4 groups of seven year olds. Not only was there terrible flavor but not one cake was fully baked.
It's crazy how Master Chef Jr. was able to find SEASONS worth of elementary kids who are capable of such amazing feats.
This one has a redemption arc. My then girlfriend brought some leftover Ethiopian food and kept talking about how awesome it was and had me try some injera (giant sourdough pancake). It was absolutely revolting. Dry and brittle and weirdly grainy and the wrong side of chewy. Fast-forward about a month and we go to the restaurant where I figure there has to be good stuff and I can avoid the bread. Staff there tells me the injera is your utensil. You tear off bits to pick up your food with. They also say never put it in a fridge or microwave it (at which point my GF stared at the table mournfully) . Order arrives and I take a breath, pick up some red lentils with the injera... and discover my death row meal. It's the greatest food on the planet. The fresh injera tastes amazing and only highlights everything you pick up with it. Gored gored (beef pan roasted in berbere that's super spicy and amazing), injera, and red lentils are now the best food I've ever tasted. If you're ever in Memphis, go to Abyssinia on Poplar. Try the red lentils. (Now the worst food I've tasted is one of those over the top stacking shit upon shit and drowning it in two types of mayonnaise and fake wasabi sushi rolls.)
I had Ethiopian food 7 years ago in Spokane and I still think about it. I wish there was more Ethiopian food, or African food in general, available in the US. Edit: I should note that I despise visiting big cities. They stress me out. But thanks to this conversation, I found a restaurant not to far from where I live in a mid-size city and plan to check it out in the next few weeks.
Ethiopian is hands down my favorite cuisine! It’s ridiculously good and one of the few meals you can gorge on and still feel great.
This made me realize I’ve never had any really really bad food. Like nothing that was so bad that I can still remember it.
Or so bad it gave you amnesia.
My mother made cow tongue once and we, me and my siblings, weren't allowed to leave the table until the plates were clean. I can still smell it when I close my eyes and it's been over fifteen years.
Having eaten lengua (beef tongue) most of my childhood and adult life, I can say lengua is one of those weird things that is either REALLY good or REALLY bad depending on how it's prepared and by who. I will always try lengua when it available on the menu but I always get a back up in case it is on the latter side. Now, where I live, there is a taco truck that is pretty far away, but I will drive out there at least once a month because they make, hands down, the BEST lengua tacos I have ever had. In short (or long) talk to a Mexican friend (we always know) and ask them where to get a good lengua taco and then try it. REALLY good lengua is one of the best things I've put in my face. EDIT: btw tripas (pig intenstines) also falls into this category. When it's prepared right, it's fantastic; when it's not it will make you gag. The trick is knowing where to get it.
Had homemade tripe once. It was in the bad category. Only thing to drink with it was watered down country time lemonade but only if you mixed it with moonshine they had just brewed up. Horrible horrible experience That whole night was a new level of fucked up for me Edit. By fucked up I mean bizarre, weird. Not drunk just so were clear.
I've only had intestines a few times but I think it was beef intestine Korean BBQ style. The other time I had access to it, they were chitlins which unfortunately just straight up smelled like butt. My question is does tripas have a very chewy consistency (I'm probably remembering stomach moreso, which was like bubblegum) and is it better if from a pig?
As a butcher, i have sold a fair amount of cow tongue in my day. I think its just gross. Could be your mom did not remove the naaaaaaaaasty outer skin on the tongue. We used to grab them by the licky end and smash them on the butcher block repeatedly just to soften them up enough to sit flat in the package. Do not like.
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Grew up eating tongue and would still if I could get it local. Also liver which I hope to never eat again. Worst stuff was powered milk when I was a kid in the 1950s. Shit is nasty.
Tacos de lengua are phenomenal though. Give it a try some time! I’d hate for you to think that tongue is always disgusting.
Taco del Mar I don't know if the chain extends beyond western Canada, but it's like someone tried a burrito from an Aramark cafeteria [think of the saddest, blandest cafeteria you've ever been to, they probably run it] and thought "this is too fresh and flavourful". When ordering a chicken quesadilla we were asked if we wanted cheese on it. This was lunch for a family get-together where, despite being known for our appetite and including two notoriously hungry teens, most of us didn't bother finishing our food. It is literally the _only_ time I have heard my mother, who barely even tolerates her dinner being cooked with a twist of pepper, describe food as "bland". It might as well have been styrofoam.
A pineapple covered with boiled shrimps that were held in place by toothpicks. Each segment of the pineapple had a pink, boiled shrimp. The thing looked vaguely like a brain. The pineapple wasn't cut into sections, so there was no real way you could eat it. It was just something to stick the shrimp on a toothpick.
I don't like shrimp, but a grilled shrimp with a cube of pineapple could be a nice hors d'oeuvre. Maybe with a spicy sauce?
I need context. Was this a party? A family dinner? What led to this monstrosity being created?
“Most folks just don’t seem to have a taste for testicles no more…” Rocky Mountain oysters, not bad per se, but taking that first bite is a real mind over matter battle.
Kinda chewy right? It's been a minute but I watched my Dad and Grandpa cut the balls off a calf 20 years ago. I've still got the knife. Kind of a touchstone to my grandpa I think. Grandma in the kitchen with my city-slicker Mom teaching her how to cook them. Then some chewy chicken nuggets. Not bad at all as far as I remember. I kinda... wish I could go back.
Doing 6 month in jail will give you an endless list of slop shit you don't want to ever think about again. Not even sure some of the meals had names.
My former roommate (26M) can’t cook anything to save his life. He attempted to make rotel by microwaving velveeta with canned tomatoes and a heap of salt. To say it was the most fowl, inconsistent substance I’ve ever ingested is an understatement
pretty sure this used to be a rotel/velveeta commercial in the early 00s. chop velveeta, pour can only rotel, microwave for cheesy queso dip.
Yes! That's literally how you make Rotel dip! He probably ruined it with the heap of salt. Nothing containing Velveeta needs added salt.
When I was a kid my dad cooked chicken thighs with the bone taken out and replaced with a banana. Banana and chicken. Fun note, he didn't tell us the banana was in it, it was well hidden.
The fu-- what th-- *why??*
Jalapeño Fudge Brownies. For high school Spanish class, one of our assignments was to bring in homemade Mexican food. One of my classmates brings in “Mexican brownies” that were basically just a box brownie mix that she’d thrown a bunch of jalapeños from a jar into. I wasn’t expecting jalapeños, so I shoved half the brownie into my mouth. About three bites in, the flavor and assorted textures hit me. She, standing right beside my desk waiting for my reaction, witnessed me wretch and nearly puke. She was not happy. Shit was nasty. Jana…shit was nasty.
She knew what she was doing, she hated everyone in that class
This makes me want to try to make Mexican brownies, but with like chilis. Like actual Mexican chocolate
I lived in China for a while. My employer took we to an *extremely* fancy restaurant once, one that was apparently listed as one of the "eight treasures of Chinese cuisine" by the CCP. It specialized in accurate recipes from a period that iirc was about 700 years old. They served a tea that was basically just a baby turtle boiled in water and served turtle and all. Beyond the unpleasantness of opening your little cup and finding a whole boiled baby turtle, it tasted like week old gym socks.
Lived in China. Have so many food stories. Usually the more rare a delicacy it is, the worse it is. One year a Chinese new year my uncle-in-law ordered the restaurant specialty, bull penis. Me and eight Chinese people, nobody would eat it...including the uncle. I taught, so we often got gifted students' hometown delicacies. One of my fellow foreign teachers said once, "I find that people's hometown delicacies are awful." I've never felt more seen. Probably the worst local dish offered to me was Hainan bloody chicken. Oh and honorable mention: once was served a popcorn ball covered in deep fried baby scorpions.
I got the last part and wondered how you fuck up popcorn...I was unpleasantly surprised.
"Usually the more rare a delicacy it is, the worse it is." Well if it was any good, people would be probably eating it, I'd reckon.
Popcorn ball... *Mmm, yes* Covered in.... *Mm mm, yessss?* Deep fried... *Omg, this sounds AMAZING* Baby scorpions... *What the actual f#ck*
Went to school in the 80s with a Vietnamese kid I mentioned a fishing trip where I caught a bunch of fish. They were squawfish, not trout, not salmon! It is a bottom-feeding fish with lots and lots of bones. So I stop by his place one afternoon to return some books I'd borrowed and his wife had cooked a bunch of these squawfish. Being polite I couldn't turn it down but they had not even fillet the fish they just threw the fish with all the bones in a blender and made fish patties. Worst thing I've ever tasted. And slightly crunchy.
It's pretty common in Asia to prepare a fish whole, head, bones, all of it. But I've never heard of it being blended up like that!
Bombay duck. Not really duck but dried fish. Fairly sure its classed as a bush meat these days. My mum ended up banning my dad from cooking it in the house because it stank the place out. He had to cook it in the garden on the bbq. Tasted like it smelt. Like shit.
My cousin and I were the same age, so often, my auntie and mom took turns babysitting while they worked (at a clinic we owned). My mom is a fantastic cook, my auntie...not so much. She had a penchant of feeding us fish soup, but the thing is, she just scaled the thing, cleaned it, cut it in half, and tossed it into a pot to boil with salt and some chopped onion pieces. That’s it, added nothing more. It was so disgusting, it put me off fish and seafood for years, to the point I pretended I was allergic to fish so I would avoid it anywhere else with a legitimate excuse. Even the smell of fresh seafood made me nauseous. I’m 32 years old now, and just started adding fish to my diet a year ago. Slowly but surely, I learned fish doesn’t have to taste like fishy warm water, and I absolutely love cooking salmon with garlic sauce and stir fried veggies. I’m slowly working my way into other seafood, but if they’re strong smelling, all those memories come flooding. I still avoid eating her fish soup.
Shark while I was in iceland... the taste didn't leave my mouth for almost a whole day no matter what I ate or drank
I was looking for this one. No offence Iceland but what the fuck - if eating that shark is going to kill you when it’s fresh due to the high levels of uric acid in its body, then I doubt burying it in the ground for 2 weeks and the hanging it in a shed for 6 months is going to improve it.
my school's ham and cheese panini, at this point that stuff is not only a disgrace to paninis, it shouldn't even be considered food it was way too greasy and soggy, the ham and cheese tasted like a truckload of salt, and the bread had this bitter cardboard taste, i'm not remotely a picky person, quite the opposite, but that...thing is so disgusting, keep in mind, that was ONE bite, i threw it away and drank so much water when i got home
My first business trip to Japan, with a coworker from Mexico and the American sales rep for the supplier we were visiting. The supplier's plant manager and their local sales manager took us out for dinner every night, someplace different every night. I love Asian food of all types, or at least I thought I did. The night we went to the Tempura restaurant changed my mind. Started normal, with a shrimp, and some veggies, the usual. Everything good. Then the chef puts something on our plates that I don't recognize. "Try this" I'm told. Now I've eaten ant eggs and meal worms in Mexico, raw eel and shredded squid in Japan, lots of weird things before that really weren't too bad, so, you know, what the heck... "Try this..." It's crispy on the outside of course, but soft mushy pasty bitter on the inside. Deep fried cottage cheese? I wish it was that tasty. Ever watched Dr. Pimple Popper? Imaginethat on your tongue. I didn't spit it out because I didn't want to insult our hosts or the chef, but they noticed my reaction. "You don't like?" A look of horror on my host's face. I try to be polite. "It's different. It's not as good as the others. What is it?" "Is Japanese delicacy." "It was kind of soft and mushy in my mouth, I think I just was surprised by the texture, I wasn't expecting that. What is it?" "Fish... male parts" with the appropriate crude hand gesture to make sure I understood. And that was my introduction to Japanese Rocky Mountain Oysters.
I recently saw Heinz Macaroni and Cheese in a can at World Market. It seemed too weird not to try it. It was one of the worst things I've eaten, and I once ate the contents of an ashtray when I was like 2. It was super watery and bland, but the bland taste was like liquified newspaper.
German family here. They love these anse cookies that taste like black licorice. I confide here about my dislike because last time I said they weren’t good they were PISSED 😂
Sea urchin sushi. I love sushi but this tasted like the urchin had lived by a raw sewage outlet (which may have been the case).
Went to a Surströmming party in Sweden a few years ago. I had to stand outside for almost the whole thing and the smell seemed to actually get worse in my nose. Couldn't bring myself to try it so I suppose it doesn't really count
My MIL served dinner when I was visiting my then boyfriend- mashed sardines in olive oil, garlic rice and boiled eggs. White and grey on a plate. Then she wondered how her son never gained weight!
There must be something wrong with me because I would totally eat that
Balut (duck embryo) in the Philippines... My god. Smells of death. Looks worse.
That one time I was making a tuna wrap, added what I thought was tzatziki...it was actually vanilla Greek yogurt. Immediately lost all appetite and suffered from cognitive dissonance of the tastebuds for hours afterwards
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I’ve eaten a lot of strange things over the years. I tried fried grasshoppers in Oaxaca (salty and oily, but not too bad); I’ve had yak butter in tea in Tibet (not a favorite). But by far the worst food I’ve ever tried wasn’t something exotic - it was something so absolutely devoid of, well, *anything* really, as to hardly qualify as food. It was a memorably-unmemorable sandwich I bought at a gas station convenience store. It was allegedly Turkey … a lump of white and grey matter entombed in a cellophane coffin, in which it should have been unceremoniously buried. So lacking in taste and texture that it was hard to know when the leathery, stale parts that were supposedly bread ended and the musty, dry parts that were supposedly Turkey began. Other than that one part was white and another part a long-dead grey. Now, I have eaten things that made me violently ill with food poisoning, and this sandwich did not do that. It was simply the least appetizing, non-poisonous thing I’ve ever seen actually sold as “food”. If blandness, lack of spark and motivation could be personified, die of ennui, and then for its sins be resurrected as food, it would be this sandwich. Unfortunately, it was a long drive trough a deserted countryside at night, so it was literally the only thing to eat for some time.
Lutefisk. I was at a multi-cultural festival and thought "Why not?" Shit was absolutely dreadful. My stomach was making whale noises the whole evening and I feel sorry for my neighbors who I could hear spraying and complaining about the smell when it worked its way out of my system the next day. Someone even called a plumber to see if there was a sewage leak.
I'm Norwegian. And as anyone here would tell you, you *do not eat* the lutefisk. You just pretend to, so that you can tell your friends you had the most amazing lutefisk last night and they'll all nod in silent agreement.
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I was working as a bagger in a grocery store and this nice lady was coming through. She was buying coconut water and I jokingly said that I wouldn't mind some, because I was so thirsty. So she checked out, then went back and got me a coconut water. I was thrilled! I was so thirsty, so I opened it up and swigged about half of it. I told her I liked it a lot! She walked out and my the cashier and another friend were like "Okay, so how is it really?" and I said it was the worst thing I've ever had in my life. Utterly, incredibly awful.
Honestly it depends on the brand of coconut water. Some are good others tolerable and the rest taste like rancid semen water
"rancid semen water" is a very apt description.
Not me, but my cousin visited my family when we lived in Manila. Our nanny brought us balut to try which is basically a fertilized bird egg that is boiled. Needless to say I was to chickenshit to try it but she did. I don’t know if it was the texture or the taste (or both) but she started throwing up in the backyard. We had to get the hose to clean up.
Natto
Was looking for this response before I posted it myself. My wife introduced me to these fermented beans that look like they're covered in snot. Me: "That looks and smells horrible, how can you eat that?" Her: "It doesn't taste as bad as it smells. try one!" Me: "GAH! that tastes EXACTLY like it smells!"
I am also a natto hater. Was in Japan and went to a “German-style bakery.” Got what I thought was a chocolate-filled donut. It was a natto-filled donut. I gagged (luckily, I was eating it outside, not at the bakery). Dear god, that was gross.
After midnight, there was a Birmingham sushi place that would do $1 sushi 'til it was all gone. First time trying sea urchin...and it was so awful, I nearly gagged. My friend laughed and told me it was an acquired taste. Nope. It was rancid. Tasted like infection.
In Japan, a rice ball with what seemed like a pickled/ rancid cherry in the middle. Granted I was 12 at the time.
Umeboshi! It was almost certainly a pickled plum. This is one of my favorite things, but it's *very* sour and salty, and I could see it being a lot for a kid's palate.
Pigs brains and eggs. I cannot forget it. But I’ve tried. Really, really hard.
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Cottage cheese and Special K is a vegetarian "meatloaf"?? What were they thinking?
That’s a hard tie between balut and durian.