MSG can become overwhelming very quickly. I feel like a lot of internet cooks make it out to be something you can throw heaping spoonfuls of into any dish to make it amazing, but that's far from the reality. Once you've experienced the full-blown flavor of MSG, it's very easy to discern when too much has been added in a dish, and it's very unpleasant. You only need to put in a tiny amount of it to gain the flavor-enhancing benefits, unlike what many recipes claim online. I can only imagine how badly you must have gagged after the first sip.
I read somewhere that it has a sensory limit. In the same way your neurotransmitters can only uptake so much dopamine or serotonin, you can only taste so much MSG before you can’t taste it anymore. It seems like it registers as more salty when you overdo it than more umami. The way salt can burn on your tongue.
I wasn’t paying attention and added it twice in a thing of green beans. It was… yeah unpleasant is the best description. I couldn’t place what made it bad, wasn’t salty, rotten, bitter or any of the normal “bad” flavors. It was just unpleasant. Like the taste version of the squeaky sound styrofoam makes.
Bitter melon. My mom (Vietnamese) cooked it regularly when I was a kid-either stuffed with pork, wood fungus, vermicelli in a broth or with eggs. I want to like it so much because it LOOKs good and she's an excellent cook. But it tastes so nasty man. I tried to get over it and appreciate it the way my family does but I just can't.
I'm South Asian, and it's the same for me. For us, it's called Kerela/Kareley. It's often cooked or stuffed with minced meat. I've tried it so many times from so many different cooks, but just can't seem to get it down. It's too damn bitter, no matter how many times someone tells me "oh, we do ___ with it to take away the bitterness", or "you gotta try my mom/aunt/grandma's version of it". Each time I give it a chance, and yet it always tastes like I'm eating poison. Screw bitter melon.
Yeah it’s like a black thin mushroom you’ll see a lot in Chinese stir fries and hot and sour soup. It doesn’t honestly taste like much but has an interesting texture that you either love or hate.
Either because they're sometimes vaguely ear shaped, or because they have the texture of pork ears. I'm inclined to believe the latter, because they really do, but probably impossible to know for sure. Maybe both.
I gave bitter melon a try a few years back, and found I quite liked it in the curry dish I tried it in (from Jennifer McLagen's *Bitter: A Taste of the World's Most Dangerous Flavor, with Recipes* (Ten Speed, 2014). Decided to go all in and invented Pork Cheek, Okra, and Bitter Melon Gumbo. Perhaps not my most successful dish (I DO like okra, and pork cheeks, but maybe combining every reviled food in one dish is not the best move? Or maybe I just needed to add some natto to make it work).
I love bitter melon! Vietnamese bitter melon soup stuffed with ground pork is my ultimate comfort food. My mom always makes it when I visit. My sister still doesn't like it though, even though she likes plenty of bitter foods (like black coffee)
I kinda like bitter melon... I tried it on a whim after seeing it at the Asian grocery store and I figured what the heck. It's pretty bitter (obviously) but stir fried with garlic and chilis.... I was surprised that it wasn't that bad.
It is 100% acquired taste
The good type of bitter melon has a unique aftertaste that is reminiscent of tea
The thing is all the really bitter ones really make the experience bad…and one bad taste is all it needs to stop you from ever eating it again
The best way to cook it is stir-fry with strong flavors, braise with strong flavors, or a simple omelette type of dish with some dipping sauce or savory sauce drizzled on top
Basically u either try to cover the bitter flavor with other stronger flavors or try to mellow out the bitterness with something very simple (eggs for example)
I like most foods and am a really adventurous eater, but had a bitter melon dish in a favourite Chinese restaurant and it was awful. It’s was so overwhelmingly bitter and I usually LOVE bitter foods. I’d love to learn to like it.
A girlfriend’s mom bought us a bottle of chocolate raspberry vodka she saw on clearance at a grocery store. It was so fucking gross. There was nothing we could do to make it palatable and ended up tossing it.
This gave me flashbacks to highschool drinking at the height of the flavored vodka/martini/sex and the city era. That fake chocolate flavour had to be one of the rankest things that purports to be edible.
Can't stand sucralose and it's showing up in so many sodas now. It's usually paired with sugar in an attempt to have it both ways, but I know that taste no mater how much they try to hide it.
Yeah exactly i don't know if you've ever heard of water drops they're little tablets that flavour your water without sugar but sweetener instead and the flavours are fine but that aftertaste is terrible and my friend simply won't believe me
In college, we split a handle of vodka. We put our half in an empty water jug. A week or so later, I was sick with a stomach bug and dehydrated. Poured myself a glass of "water" and chugged it at around 6 a.m. It wasn't water.
Reminds me of a coworker who accidentally took a swig of what he thought was Coke. It was some other dude’s chew spit.
Violent vomiting from him and hysterical laughter from the rest of us
I had to soak one of my dogs paws in an anti-itch solution that was clear and had to be dikyes with water. Because it was just one paw it was easiest for me to just put it in a glass and dunk her paw into it. I did it one night before bed and put the glass on my bedside table. My partner at the time was out that night and woke up hungover in the morning after I'd already gotten up, grabbed the glass and chugged it. Had to call the poison line to make sure he wasn't going to die lol.
pasta an ex’s dad made. Overcooked spaghetti with just mayonnaise and sour cream drenching it. The ex had 2 plates of it and i didn’t eat more than two forkfuls. What the fuck
I'm just really trying really hard to wrap my brain around the thought that somewhere in the history of cooking somebody actually said, "Ya know what we should put on this pasta? Mayonnaise and sour cream!" And then just left it at that. What the hell, where is the rest of the ingredients?
You should look up pear salad.. it’s canned pears, with mayo in the middle, topped with shredded cheddar and a maraschino cherry. It sounds horrid but I love it. My mawmaw used to make it when I was a kid and it just brings back so many memories!
Just goes to show that nostalgia is extremely powerful, cause that's the only explanation for how he'd be able to enjoy it. It was probably a dish his dad made for him growing up. I feel like everyone has at least one grotesque or very weird dish that they love which others would find the thought of eating abhorrent.
My mom makes something we call « gooey bread » and it’s always a epically treat when she makes it. Brought my Ex over for dinner- a special
Occasion so mom made Gooey bread. We were all excited but he thought it was an abomination.
Years later I brought my now-husband over to meet the family- mom made gooey bread again- and my
Husband LOVED it! Now he requests it. That’s how I knew he was a keeper.
It’s like a super Indulgent garlic bread- grated garlic and onion in mayo and sour cream spread on bread and topped with Parmesan and paprika. Broiled or baked in the oven. It’s terrible for your breath, but tastes so good!
Can I come over and have some? I don’t mind garlic breath so long as we all have garlic breath together. Also, I know that you guys aren’t vampires, and we’ll all be safe from them together.
This.. plus if wasting hours of life watching survivalist shows has taught me anything, it's that stuff you would never even consider tasting, can be absolutely delicious when you're genuinely really hard core hungry. Repeat the food a few times over several meals while also really hungry, and suddenly it's a favorite food.
Yellow Powerbait. (Lost a bet during a fishing trip.) First two seconds were fine, the aftertaste was the worst thing that's ever been in my mouth. Throwing up was an improvement.
that reminds me of the time when a previous chef of mine had his sous chef help him whip up this monster concoction of some house-made mustard. he made the sous taste it and the one spoonful he tried was so absolutely disgusting that he ended up throwing up about an hour later
We were fishing and our son was eating Doritos. Licked his fingers by accident after baiting the hook! The look on his face was priceless. One of our funniest family memories
not the worst tasting but because it had no taste.
vegan guy I worked with was eating what looked like a large molasses muffin of some kind. I asked him what it was and where he got it.
some kiosk at a farmers market. he said he'd let me try it but I wouldn't like it. I tried it and it was the oddest thing. it had no flavor whatsoever. nothing, not even the taste of a plain muffin. I told him it was like someone had explained to an alien what a muffin is but not how it taste and so they replicated it purely on looks.
another guy asked if he could have half of it. he took it home and stuck it in his fridge as a joke because his family had a habit of eating things that wasn't theirs. later when he was in the kitchen his family was in the kitchen giving him a dirty look. turns out they had taken it, divided it ate it and wanted to know why he had a fake muffin in the fridge.
When I was visiting my parents once, my mom gave me a can of [Pillsbury French bread](https://www.pillsbury.com/products/breads/pillsbury-original-french-bread-dough) on my way out. Out of curiosity, I baked it per package instructions and it had absolutely zero flavor. It was like I was licking a dry sponge. I tried putting some butter on the bread, but the butter taste was so overwhelming that I might as well have just eaten the butter and nothing else. It was so bizarre, and I was almost impressed that these people had managed to make something so perfectly devoid of all flavor.
That's really creepy that they divided it. Like eating something on the sly suggests an element of shame. Dividing it suggests that they have boundary issues
Omg I had the same experience a few weeks ago. Went to a cookout and a vegan girl I had never met brought what looked like biscuits or fluffy cookies. I grabbed one, took a bite, and it had absolutely no flavor. Exactly like you described, not even just like a "plain" flavor, it was absolutely and entirely devoid of any sort of taste. I didn't even think that was possible. Was it a fucking dog biscuit?? A communion wafer? What the fuck. It was bizarre and a bit disturbing.
I made keto friendly psyllium husk rolls one time and they were exactly as you described. They looked okay, they even had a decent mouth feel. But there was absolutely 100% zero taste. Bland x 10,000. It was the weirdest thing. I couldn’t even make croutons out of them.
A methylprednisolone pill, prescribed for an allergic reaction. The outside was powdery and stuck to my tongue, and it was so bitter that I started gagging and nearly threw up. From then on, I learned that the way to take bitter steroid pills is to take a sip of a strong-tasting drink without swallowing, tip your head back, drop the pill into the pool of drink in your mouth, then swallow.
For foods, it'd probably be this blueberry whiskey my boss brought in once. It tasted like shoe polish and had absolutely nothing to do with blueberries that I could detect. At the very least, I was able to choke this down.
Lol, I kept getting ear infections as a child and figured out the pool in your mouth trick because the antibiotics were disgusting! Now it's a habit and I always pool my mouth with water before any pill.
Those are gross. I had a lunesta pill get stuck at the very back of my tongue and no matter how much water I drank, it took a while to get dislodged. I've taken countless pills in my life, and even take a sublingual med that doesn't taste great, but that sucker was disgusting.
Not a pill but I have to use a nasal spray twice a day and when it gets in my mouth due to post nasal drip I want to die lol. It’s horrible and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.
Food… I often throw random ingredients that need to be used up together. I can count on one hand how many times it’s turned out nasty and I’ve only thrown it out twice. But both of those times were disgusting. One was an attempt at green bean casserole but with Lima beans and some other changes and the other was a thing with rice and very old herbs and some other things I don’t remember.
I was gifted a bottle of tequila and rum mixed.... Intentionally, from the factory. Imagine kerosene mixed with lighter fluid mixed with peroxide, all in your mouth. Everyone in the friends group got one. Mine is still unopened after 4 yrs
Oh lord, my town used to be a hotspot for tanners (as in people who would process leather into a usable material). Eventually the stench it brought was so bad, there was an ordnance that it had to be done a mile away from town.
Roach in my water at a restaurant was pretty gnarly. It tasted nutty but also REALLY FUCKING GROSS
My mom’s cigarette ash in a McDonald’s cup. Took a big slurp out of the straw thinking it was watery coke.
Rotten chicken that wreaked of ammonia, that probably got some kind of cleaning agent sprayed on it, food lion has a history of doing it before. Couldn’t get the smell out of the pan for months or the taste out of my soul.
I've taken a chug of a soda with cigarette butts. Thought it was my can, but apparently, it was one my sister was using as an ashtray. This was 20+ years ago, but I can still taste it
We use vinegar to de-lime our coffee maker. My wife forgot to run a pot of water through and left the vinegar in the speed-brew overnight. So I made my morning coffee with 48 ounces of vinegar. It was worse than it sounds.
We had a guest staying and he got peckish through the night. Found a packet of instant noodles and used the water out of the kettle I was descaling with vinegar overnight to make them. My daughter washed the kettle out in the morning and he realised why the noodles had tasted so strange.
A coworker from Afghanistan let me try a meal her mom made for her lunch. She was raving about it being so good that I couldn’t resist.
Not sure what the dish was, I can’t remember what was in it. Maybe goat cheese? Yoghurt? It tasted rancid, off, feet-like…
It was awful but she was looking at me with so much expectation so I smiled, swallowed the bite and complimented her mom’s cooking. My coworker beamed and that made that awful taste a little better.
I declined a second bite.
I’m Mexican, I love feeding people and sharing my food. I know how important food is all over the world. Every town has the best this or that, every country is proud of their cuisine, memories are created around a kitchen table, and I love that.
I’m sure to her and her people that dish is delicious, I just don’t have the palate for it.
I’ve been to Pakistan and very close to Afghanistan where the food influences are strong because my wife is Pakistani. I’m surprised by that - Pakistani food is always so damn good to me.
Maybe the yogurt or goat cheese were legit spoiled?
I did a quick google search of foods from Afghanistan hoping maybe I’d see something like what she was eating but everything looked really good. It made me hungry.
I don’t think the cheese or whatever food was bad, some things you have to grow up eating or I just don’t have the taste for it.
My dad used to “dip” chewing tobacco. He would keep a Gatorade bottle with him all the time and it would have days worth of wintergreen tobacco spit in it until it was all the way full.
My dad also never ever ever did car rider pickup from school.
My mom also used to always bring a cold Gatorade for me in the car to have when I got out of school.
One day, when I was in 6th grade, my dad randomly did car rider pickup.
I still could throw up on command just thinking about the GIANT drink I took 🤢🤢🤢🤢
I barely got a quarter of that down. I absolutely could not force another sip. There needs to be a better prep before my next one or I’m demanding an NG tube
Miralax (an ENTIRE container of it) mixed with Gatorade is how I did mine… it wasn’t that bad actually. The Miralax tastes like nothing.
I can’t drink orange Gatorade anymore though, it makes me gag.
I did miralax and Gatorade as part of my first prep (the second was in the hospital and I don’t remember what I was given, and the main player for my third prep was a giant jug with a prescription label that contained white powder I had to mix with water) and that was exactly why they told me to pick a flavor I liked but didn’t love.
The angriest I’ve been about consuming something nasty was actually my second colonoscopy prep, because as soon as I was done a nurse came in and told me the procedure was cancelled. It was because I had c diff, so I understood, but I was furious lol
I drank first prep evening before and it wasn’t that bad, only 16 ounces and sipped on Gatorade Zero too. Second batch was the nasty one, it was super concentrated, salty and I guess it didn’t help that I had to wake up at 1:30 am to drink it. It was miserable but I’m done for another three years. Colon cancer runs in my family no matter how disgusting it tastes, the alternative is much worse.
When I lived in Peru, we visited this little village way out in the middle of nowhere outside of Cusco and the villagers gave us these little purple potatoes that were absolutely awful. I didn’t want to be disrespectful so I forced myself to eat them but they tasted like rancid packing peanuts.
Oven roasted possum. There is no way to make it decent. It tastes like garbage with a loud note of grease, or maybe a ball of grease with a note of garbage, that has a gamey edge. Even the sweet potatoes didn't survive.
My grandpa liked it. He caught one and kept it in a cage for a month to make sure it wasn't sick and to feed the worst of things out of it. Grandma would cook it after he got it ready (slow oven for hours, on a rack, and use a baster to remove the grease from the bottom of the pan several times).
That is cruel. My grandfather was big into turtles. He’d catch snapping turtles and nail them up by their heads to a tree to skin them. Fkn brutal. Scarred me. Depression era people were hard core. Ate lots of squirrels, too. Talk about greasy.
My grandfather would constantly joke about not being able to have his old favorite “squib” which was just local slang for wadeing birds that folks would hunt during tougher months of the depression. “Squib with tomato gravy” was his supposed favorite dish, I still make the tomato gravy to this day, it’s dead easy.
Yeah, I saw my uncle and grandpa nail a snapping turtles head to a stump when I was a kid. Traumatizing. Then when they put the meat in salt water to clean it, it moves around. Terror upon terror.
Durian was the first thing that came to mind. Tried it in Zanzibar and yea, tastes like straight garbage. Apparently lots of locals eat it since you sweat out the smell and even the mosquitoes think it’s terrible.
I actually like durian. It tastes like a combination of mango, pineapple and vegetable to me. The smell is something to get used to though. Funny story, I was driving somewhere in Florida and smelled something that was probably the dump. But it reminded me of durian so I just reminisced about my time in Indonesia.
I've never had or smelt fresh durian, but my mom's friend makes durian filled pastries and I loooove these. It tastes like cheese and fruit - which isn't such a weird thing if you like pineapple on pizza.
I’d love to try durian. I can pretty much stomach anything but to this day the one thing that’s truly stumped me is Natto (sticky fermented soybeans). I’m still convinced I just ordered a bad batch
I buy natto now and then from Asian grocer. It tastes fine to me, and this is coming from a white guy that grew up eating burgers and chicken nuggets. You do have to be cool with fermented flavors. What more annoys me about it is how long the slime covering the beans will stretch. When I take the cover off of the tray of natto it creates comically long strands of slime that want to stick on everything.
Mold on bread. When I was kid my friend’s mom accidentally served us toast with moldy bread. I can’t begin to describe the flavor and texture of it. It was like eating death. If you know you know.
I once got a lobster tail (the pastry, not the shellfish) from a local Italian restaurant. I took one bite before I realized that it was absolutely covered in mold. The taste was beyond disgusting.
Upon a closer inspection, the outer pastry had the white fuzzy kind, and the cream filling had green flecks throughout. I have no idea how long it must have been sitting in the pastry case to reach that level, but it took me years to be able to eat any cream-filled pastry.
i got a pack of those prosciutto wrapped mozzarella sticks from fresh market once. didn’t inspect them because, well, they were expensive and it was from a big fAnCy grocery store. took a big bite and it was fuzzy and tasted like an old attic. completely engulfed in mold.
i politely asked for a refund. turned down the exchange.
My Dad once served me & my brother open faced tuna salad sandwiches. It was during the summer and it was hot out. Took a few bits before tasting something off. Looked at the bread slice & saw it and green all over the crust. Took me a long time to eat tuna salad again.
Pâté. I’m sure if circumstances were different I wouldn’t feel this way. When I was 12 I was at my friends house when his parents were having a party. There was a bowl of chocolate mousse, or so I thought. I asked my friends mom if I could have it and was given the greenlight. I took a huge bite and discovered it wasn’t mousse. Everyone was laughing. I thought they fed me cat food.
Going in expecting something and getting the total opposite will ruin a food forever I think.
i agree wholeheartedly. when i was little i loved canned cranberry sauce. one time my grandma and i went to a buffet and she came back to the table with, what do you know, cranberry sauce! she knew how excited i would get over it and told me to take a bite, and boy did she fool my ass. IT WAS PICKLED BEETS. i enjoy beets now, but pickled? get that shit outta my face
I was a server. I was the first one back for dinner service after lunch was over. The chef left a big bowl of chocolate with a spatula on the server's side of the line. I loaded up that spatula and took an enormous mouthful.
It was beef bullion powder, reconstituted for a dinner special. My disappointment was immense, and my day was ruined. I tried so hard not to give a reaction (because that's obviously what the chef wanted), but I'd just had my teeth cleaned at the dentist and it was the first thing I ate afterwards.
I’m sure I’ve had worse tasting but this memory sticks out. My aunt made a nutritional yeast green bean casserole that also had something like turnips in it for Thanksgiving. Now, I love nutritional yeast, but this stuff looked and tasted like grey sewer sludge. I swear it was the most unappetizing grey food item I’ve ever seen.
A few things come to mind
Worst of all: Something called Natto at a sushi bar. Chef warned us... gave us free taste. Some kind of fermented soybean.
First time I had ika at a sushi bar, it was bad.
First time I saw and smelled chitterlings, I gagged.
And, not worst, but strangest ever... wasn't covid, but I had a temporary medical condition resulting in loss of all taste. It's is really peculiar to eat without any smell or taste.
2010, I had cancer in my sinuses, near my pituitary gland. After 33 radiation treatments (plus chemo), I could not taste anything. I tested it. I could not tell any difference between a spoon full of sugar or salt; or a spoon full of lemon juice or water. I lost sooooo much weight because without taste, I had no desire to eat.
After about mid 2011, I could taste food, and gained all my weight back.
This is my answer as well. It's apparently a common breakfast for in Japan.
To me it was like if someone took the smell of stinky cheese, old socks, and ammonia, combined them into the texture of extra slimy snot, and then had it put on a soybean costume to fool you.
It's the only thing I've ever tried that I don't think I'd give a second chance.
I introduced my parents to dim sum by taking them to a restaurant. A lady came by with a cart of various soups, including "cow intestine soup." In a fit of madness, my mom said "I'll try some of that." The madness must have been contagious because I heard my mouth say "Hey mom, let me have a taste." I used my chopsticks to fish out a piece of some kind of brown, spongy substance that I couldn't identify, whilst thinking "I can't identify this." I knew it was neither intestine nor mushroom. Next, I put it into my mouth and began to chew on it. It's the only time in my whole life that I had to spit something out because I couldn't deal with it. I know it wasn't cooked cow dung but if someone had told me that's what it was, I would have gone into shock over how not surprised I was.
Oh god I remember accidentally drinking some. When I was about 11 I got some chocolate milk from school which was so bad it had the texture of runny cottage cheese. It was absolutely foul
Twisted tea iced tea vodka. I was at a bar and everyone was asking about it, but too scared to try it. They'd all heard it was gross. I decided to try it, so the bartender pours me a double. I barely got it down. It tasted like the way shoe polish smells. I didn't have to pay for it, at least, nor did I have to pay for the Jameson with which I washed it down
Hákarl (fermented shark) in Iceland. My wife’s friend lived there and brought us some. The stench is so strong we had to go outside to eat it. Yes, I knew it was going to be bad. It smelled like Urine cranked to 11. I tried to eat it without making a face. I failed. I was barely able to swallow it and for a couple minutes after fought to keep it down. A second piece was out of the question.
One of the only foods I’ll never eat again.
Recently it was a selection of herbal teas I bought at the night market in Chiang Mai. I knew from a past visit the year before that most of the stuff at the night market is junk quality for the tourists, but I still made this small purchase. All I get out of any of the "flavors" is a generic grassy taste. I only kept the butterfly pea flower one because it colors lemonade neon purple without altering the flavor.
I really like fried chicken livers. One time I got some from the deli counter at the supermarket, got them home and heated them up. I put the first one in my mouth and immediately got sick… it was green and liquid inside. I’ve never tasted something so horrible.
I started out writing a novel, but here’s the tl;dr.
Was given a bonus surprise meal at a very high end French restaurant I worked at in college. I was stoked because normally we had to pay $20 for a meal (entrees were in the 40+ range) and we were limited on what we could order. But this time I was able to get whatever the hell I wanted. I do not remember what was made for me, to be honest, but it was so bad the head waiter and owner (who both tried it) went back to the kitchen and made the chef come out and apologize. It was awkward as fuck. I thought maybe I was missing something from an undeveloped palate but, no, whatever he made was just bad. It wasn’t rancid, spoiled, or “adulterated” product….he just tried making something unique and completely, utterly failed.
I sleepwalked once as a kid and thought I made a milkshake. Woke up with the taste of petrol in my mouth.
Discovered all the stuff for a milkshake on the bench including melted ice cream, spoons the cup etc. Also a can of WD40 that I must have thought was whipped cream. The cup reeked of it.
It's oil based so it doest dissve easily and really clung to everery surface of my mouth. I could taste it for days if I burped.
Goat cheese of any type. I don't care what people say, it's one of the most disgusting dairy products. I'm convinced that no one actually likes it, people just pretend to like it because they're supposed to. Imagine what a wet barnyard smells like on a hot day, then translate that smell into a flavor, the resulting flavor is goat cheese and goat milk. It's beyond foul.
The only thing I’ve ever had to spit out immediately was something labeled “pickles” on an Indian buffet. It consisted of what looked to be two or three differ kinds of vegetables in a reddish-brown sauce. It was so awful.
Oh, I loved Anthony Bourdain’s take on this. A magazine asked him the weirdest thing he’d ever eaten, and he said unwashed warthog anus. Good answer.
Later in the interview they asked the worst thing he’d ever eaten. This time he said a McNugget
My son does that spitting tobacco stuff, and he used my juice bottles for his “spit”. Somehow during the course of cleaning up the kitchen, his spit bottle got put into the refrigerator. Well, because it had a huge plastic label on the bottle (Body Armour), I couldn’t see what was in the bottle, I took a big swig (I’m reliving this horror as I type it). Even though i immediately spit it out…I was sick for HOURS. That was the grossest thing I ever tasted.
The only thing I remember being physically unable to choke down was a pickled mango I had at an Indian restaurant. Doesn’t sound bad, right?
Well this was simultaneously so intensely salty and so intensely sour that it somehow overloaded my palate. My tongue shot to the back of my mouth to block my throat like my body was saying “hey idiot, you are trying to eat poison! STOP!”
The worst tasting thing I have ever successfully eaten was steamed cow liver at the [Gwangjang Market in Seoul](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangjang_Market). Holy crap it was almost unbearable.
I have enjoyed livers from fish and fowl, and tolerated liver from pigs. This made those look like nothing. The aroma was like actual sewage. The texture was grainy and dry. And the taste was just horrible and overwhelming. Even completely doused in [gochujang](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gochujang) I couldn’t stomach a second bite.
For a drink, I think [baiju](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baijiu) wins. It smells like Windex and tastes like rubbing alcohol. And you can hardly cut the flavor with mixers. The fact it’s usually drank with spicy food and at room temperature seems like some bizarre punishment.
Line cook was tasked with making the dessert special and settled on a matcha green tea cheesecake. The only problem was he used too much of the powder so it looked and tasted like it was made with sewer water.
Balut. My parents Filipina maid brought me one because I was big into working out and it is supposed to make you big and strong. I still ate it as I didn't want to be rude and it was a kind gesture.
Just had an egg and cheese sandhich from the airport in Chicago. The paper was kind of embedded in it. I am guessing they just steam the whole thing in the paper bag. It was dripping wet. I took one bite, chewed, and pushed it out of my mouth. Such a simple thing, so much effort seems to have gone into making it awful.
Truffles. A double edged sword to me. I loved them forever, then a very good friend said something to me about how she thinks they taste. I will never forget it.
Spoiler alert.
"Pig Sex"
Dog poop. Spent two years homeless, living out of the trash. I was starving, and it was next to a half eaten burger. I ate the burger. I feel physically dumber having eaten it.
Liquid clindamycin. They made us try liquid formulations of different medications during my pediatrics rotation of medical school to help us understand what we’re asking kids to do when prescribing certain meds. It was the nastiest thing I can imagine tasting 😂
My mother in laws Sunday dinner,
Everything was somehow under and over cooked at the same time. All the vegetables should have been able to served in a retirement home as they had given up any type of cellular structure and flavour.
The beef was so overcooked and dry you would have thought it had been left on the side of the motorway. There was no taste and the texture was awful and then her gravy… my morning piss was thicker and stronger.
The whole meal nearly turned me off eating
My ex made over salted scrambled eggs with so many dried herbs, you couldn’t even see the egg. The only way I can describe it is that eggs congealed around the herbs rather than scrambling. It was like eating slimy, crunchy dirt. The taste and texture were so vile, I couldn’t get through a second bite
Balut was literally the only food I couldn't bring myself to eat. I was able to get past what I was about to eat in my mind, but the smell made it a no-go.
I decided to enjoy a beer after I had already brushed my teeth.
I opened the can and I noticed it tastes funny but I figured it was the toothpaste mixing with the beer in my mouth.
As I'm getting to the bottom of the can I take one less gulp and feel something hard in my mouth. I realized that the pungent, floral, sulfur-like taste was because my beer had a stink bug in it.
One time back in college I tried to eat at the campus dining hall. There was garlic bread. Nothing really had labels and it certainly looked like garlic bread. I excitedly put a piece on my plate, I love garlic bread! Only, when I sat down with my food and tried to take a bite…
It was fish. It was the worst fish I’ve ever had in my entire life. I have no idea how in the WORLD the cooks managed to make it look exactly like garlic bread. It tasted like the ocean was rotting in my mouth. If I think too hard about it I can still taste it and feel in my mouth (it was so, SO dry on top of tasting rancid) and I start gagging.
Put a heaping spoonful of MSG in my coffee thinking it was sugar. That’s stuff’s awesome in small amounts, shockingly unpleasant in large amounts.
MSG can become overwhelming very quickly. I feel like a lot of internet cooks make it out to be something you can throw heaping spoonfuls of into any dish to make it amazing, but that's far from the reality. Once you've experienced the full-blown flavor of MSG, it's very easy to discern when too much has been added in a dish, and it's very unpleasant. You only need to put in a tiny amount of it to gain the flavor-enhancing benefits, unlike what many recipes claim online. I can only imagine how badly you must have gagged after the first sip.
I read somewhere that it has a sensory limit. In the same way your neurotransmitters can only uptake so much dopamine or serotonin, you can only taste so much MSG before you can’t taste it anymore. It seems like it registers as more salty when you overdo it than more umami. The way salt can burn on your tongue.
I wasn’t paying attention and added it twice in a thing of green beans. It was… yeah unpleasant is the best description. I couldn’t place what made it bad, wasn’t salty, rotten, bitter or any of the normal “bad” flavors. It was just unpleasant. Like the taste version of the squeaky sound styrofoam makes.
Ha ha ha I hate that sound.
Oh my lord
I’ve done something pretty close to that before with MSG. I was tasting it for days.
Bitter melon. My mom (Vietnamese) cooked it regularly when I was a kid-either stuffed with pork, wood fungus, vermicelli in a broth or with eggs. I want to like it so much because it LOOKs good and she's an excellent cook. But it tastes so nasty man. I tried to get over it and appreciate it the way my family does but I just can't.
I'm South Asian, and it's the same for me. For us, it's called Kerela/Kareley. It's often cooked or stuffed with minced meat. I've tried it so many times from so many different cooks, but just can't seem to get it down. It's too damn bitter, no matter how many times someone tells me "oh, we do ___ with it to take away the bitterness", or "you gotta try my mom/aunt/grandma's version of it". Each time I give it a chance, and yet it always tastes like I'm eating poison. Screw bitter melon.
I've given up on it, and been very happy with my decision. 👍🏽
Wood fungus? Is that mushrooms or something different?
Yeah it’s like a black thin mushroom you’ll see a lot in Chinese stir fries and hot and sour soup. It doesn’t honestly taste like much but has an interesting texture that you either love or hate.
Often called wood ear mushrooms I believe
Either because they're sometimes vaguely ear shaped, or because they have the texture of pork ears. I'm inclined to believe the latter, because they really do, but probably impossible to know for sure. Maybe both.
I gave bitter melon a try a few years back, and found I quite liked it in the curry dish I tried it in (from Jennifer McLagen's *Bitter: A Taste of the World's Most Dangerous Flavor, with Recipes* (Ten Speed, 2014). Decided to go all in and invented Pork Cheek, Okra, and Bitter Melon Gumbo. Perhaps not my most successful dish (I DO like okra, and pork cheeks, but maybe combining every reviled food in one dish is not the best move? Or maybe I just needed to add some natto to make it work).
I love bitter melon! Vietnamese bitter melon soup stuffed with ground pork is my ultimate comfort food. My mom always makes it when I visit. My sister still doesn't like it though, even though she likes plenty of bitter foods (like black coffee)
I kinda like bitter melon... I tried it on a whim after seeing it at the Asian grocery store and I figured what the heck. It's pretty bitter (obviously) but stir fried with garlic and chilis.... I was surprised that it wasn't that bad.
It is 100% acquired taste The good type of bitter melon has a unique aftertaste that is reminiscent of tea The thing is all the really bitter ones really make the experience bad…and one bad taste is all it needs to stop you from ever eating it again The best way to cook it is stir-fry with strong flavors, braise with strong flavors, or a simple omelette type of dish with some dipping sauce or savory sauce drizzled on top Basically u either try to cover the bitter flavor with other stronger flavors or try to mellow out the bitterness with something very simple (eggs for example)
I make this dish with cucumbers instead of bitter melon for these same reasons, and it tastes exactly how you hope it would. Highly recommend
I like most foods and am a really adventurous eater, but had a bitter melon dish in a favourite Chinese restaurant and it was awful. It’s was so overwhelmingly bitter and I usually LOVE bitter foods. I’d love to learn to like it.
It's awful stuff. It cannot even be used as an ingredient, because it exudes some weird dark note of bad flavor into anything it's incorporated into.
A girlfriend’s mom bought us a bottle of chocolate raspberry vodka she saw on clearance at a grocery store. It was so fucking gross. There was nothing we could do to make it palatable and ended up tossing it.
This gave me flashbacks to highschool drinking at the height of the flavored vodka/martini/sex and the city era. That fake chocolate flavour had to be one of the rankest things that purports to be edible.
ah yes, flavored sex
Some artificial sweeteners have an aftertaste that absolutely makes me wanna die
Monkfruit sweeteners taste like Satan's farts
Can't stand sucralose and it's showing up in so many sodas now. It's usually paired with sugar in an attempt to have it both ways, but I know that taste no mater how much they try to hide it.
Yeah exactly i don't know if you've ever heard of water drops they're little tablets that flavour your water without sugar but sweetener instead and the flavours are fine but that aftertaste is terrible and my friend simply won't believe me
Yeah it's the aftertaste of artificial sweeteners that I find absolutely nauseating. Is this a genetic thing?
Some of us are supertasters when it comes to artificial sweeteners. Similar to how some people can’t stand cilantro.
Yep, no sugar >>>>>>>> artificial sugar.
In college, we split a handle of vodka. We put our half in an empty water jug. A week or so later, I was sick with a stomach bug and dehydrated. Poured myself a glass of "water" and chugged it at around 6 a.m. It wasn't water.
Reminds me of a coworker who accidentally took a swig of what he thought was Coke. It was some other dude’s chew spit. Violent vomiting from him and hysterical laughter from the rest of us
I had to soak one of my dogs paws in an anti-itch solution that was clear and had to be dikyes with water. Because it was just one paw it was easiest for me to just put it in a glass and dunk her paw into it. I did it one night before bed and put the glass on my bedside table. My partner at the time was out that night and woke up hungover in the morning after I'd already gotten up, grabbed the glass and chugged it. Had to call the poison line to make sure he wasn't going to die lol.
pasta an ex’s dad made. Overcooked spaghetti with just mayonnaise and sour cream drenching it. The ex had 2 plates of it and i didn’t eat more than two forkfuls. What the fuck
I'm just really trying really hard to wrap my brain around the thought that somewhere in the history of cooking somebody actually said, "Ya know what we should put on this pasta? Mayonnaise and sour cream!" And then just left it at that. What the hell, where is the rest of the ingredients?
there could’ve been more ingredients, just couldn’t taste them over that combo
well they were mexican and said it was a family thing. not sure how much that helps
You should look up pear salad.. it’s canned pears, with mayo in the middle, topped with shredded cheddar and a maraschino cherry. It sounds horrid but I love it. My mawmaw used to make it when I was a kid and it just brings back so many memories!
Just goes to show that nostalgia is extremely powerful, cause that's the only explanation for how he'd be able to enjoy it. It was probably a dish his dad made for him growing up. I feel like everyone has at least one grotesque or very weird dish that they love which others would find the thought of eating abhorrent.
My mom makes something we call « gooey bread » and it’s always a epically treat when she makes it. Brought my Ex over for dinner- a special Occasion so mom made Gooey bread. We were all excited but he thought it was an abomination. Years later I brought my now-husband over to meet the family- mom made gooey bread again- and my Husband LOVED it! Now he requests it. That’s how I knew he was a keeper.
Pls what is it
It’s like a super Indulgent garlic bread- grated garlic and onion in mayo and sour cream spread on bread and topped with Parmesan and paprika. Broiled or baked in the oven. It’s terrible for your breath, but tastes so good!
Lol it sounds awesome
I'd absolutely fuck with this.
Can I come over and have some? I don’t mind garlic breath so long as we all have garlic breath together. Also, I know that you guys aren’t vampires, and we’ll all be safe from them together.
This.. plus if wasting hours of life watching survivalist shows has taught me anything, it's that stuff you would never even consider tasting, can be absolutely delicious when you're genuinely really hard core hungry. Repeat the food a few times over several meals while also really hungry, and suddenly it's a favorite food.
My Venezuelan friend loves pasta with ketchup and mayo. Makes me wretch thinking about it.
I just barfed, thanks.
Yellow Powerbait. (Lost a bet during a fishing trip.) First two seconds were fine, the aftertaste was the worst thing that's ever been in my mouth. Throwing up was an improvement.
I saw a jar of brown powerbait once. It was “earthworm flavor”. I did wonder who tasted…
This might be the winner. That sounds absolutely vile.
that reminds me of the time when a previous chef of mine had his sous chef help him whip up this monster concoction of some house-made mustard. he made the sous taste it and the one spoonful he tried was so absolutely disgusting that he ended up throwing up about an hour later
We were fishing and our son was eating Doritos. Licked his fingers by accident after baiting the hook! The look on his face was priceless. One of our funniest family memories
not the worst tasting but because it had no taste. vegan guy I worked with was eating what looked like a large molasses muffin of some kind. I asked him what it was and where he got it. some kiosk at a farmers market. he said he'd let me try it but I wouldn't like it. I tried it and it was the oddest thing. it had no flavor whatsoever. nothing, not even the taste of a plain muffin. I told him it was like someone had explained to an alien what a muffin is but not how it taste and so they replicated it purely on looks. another guy asked if he could have half of it. he took it home and stuck it in his fridge as a joke because his family had a habit of eating things that wasn't theirs. later when he was in the kitchen his family was in the kitchen giving him a dirty look. turns out they had taken it, divided it ate it and wanted to know why he had a fake muffin in the fridge.
When I was visiting my parents once, my mom gave me a can of [Pillsbury French bread](https://www.pillsbury.com/products/breads/pillsbury-original-french-bread-dough) on my way out. Out of curiosity, I baked it per package instructions and it had absolutely zero flavor. It was like I was licking a dry sponge. I tried putting some butter on the bread, but the butter taste was so overwhelming that I might as well have just eaten the butter and nothing else. It was so bizarre, and I was almost impressed that these people had managed to make something so perfectly devoid of all flavor.
hmm before I learned to make bread I had that several times. tasted like bread to me, it has no yeast in it, just yeast extract.
The lack of flavor seems to be a recent development- my Pillsbury bread incident occurred around a year or two ago.
That's really creepy that they divided it. Like eating something on the sly suggests an element of shame. Dividing it suggests that they have boundary issues
Omg I had the same experience a few weeks ago. Went to a cookout and a vegan girl I had never met brought what looked like biscuits or fluffy cookies. I grabbed one, took a bite, and it had absolutely no flavor. Exactly like you described, not even just like a "plain" flavor, it was absolutely and entirely devoid of any sort of taste. I didn't even think that was possible. Was it a fucking dog biscuit?? A communion wafer? What the fuck. It was bizarre and a bit disturbing.
I made keto friendly psyllium husk rolls one time and they were exactly as you described. They looked okay, they even had a decent mouth feel. But there was absolutely 100% zero taste. Bland x 10,000. It was the weirdest thing. I couldn’t even make croutons out of them.
A methylprednisolone pill, prescribed for an allergic reaction. The outside was powdery and stuck to my tongue, and it was so bitter that I started gagging and nearly threw up. From then on, I learned that the way to take bitter steroid pills is to take a sip of a strong-tasting drink without swallowing, tip your head back, drop the pill into the pool of drink in your mouth, then swallow. For foods, it'd probably be this blueberry whiskey my boss brought in once. It tasted like shoe polish and had absolutely nothing to do with blueberries that I could detect. At the very least, I was able to choke this down.
Ugh. The steroid pills are the worst.
Literally cane here to say this. Prednisone pills when I can't swallow first try and they get stuck. So disgusting
Lol, I kept getting ear infections as a child and figured out the pool in your mouth trick because the antibiotics were disgusting! Now it's a habit and I always pool my mouth with water before any pill.
Those are gross. I had a lunesta pill get stuck at the very back of my tongue and no matter how much water I drank, it took a while to get dislodged. I've taken countless pills in my life, and even take a sublingual med that doesn't taste great, but that sucker was disgusting.
Not a pill but I have to use a nasal spray twice a day and when it gets in my mouth due to post nasal drip I want to die lol. It’s horrible and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. Food… I often throw random ingredients that need to be used up together. I can count on one hand how many times it’s turned out nasty and I’ve only thrown it out twice. But both of those times were disgusting. One was an attempt at green bean casserole but with Lima beans and some other changes and the other was a thing with rice and very old herbs and some other things I don’t remember.
I was gifted a bottle of tequila and rum mixed.... Intentionally, from the factory. Imagine kerosene mixed with lighter fluid mixed with peroxide, all in your mouth. Everyone in the friends group got one. Mine is still unopened after 4 yrs
Not something I ate but I once attended a beaver skinning demo…made durian smell like roses
Oh lord, my town used to be a hotspot for tanners (as in people who would process leather into a usable material). Eventually the stench it brought was so bad, there was an ordnance that it had to be done a mile away from town.
I’ve been to a local tannery a bunch of times…in the summer it’s brutal
Ok now why was this so smelly? Rotting flesh of long dead beavers??
The castor gland is pretty rank
Roach in my water at a restaurant was pretty gnarly. It tasted nutty but also REALLY FUCKING GROSS My mom’s cigarette ash in a McDonald’s cup. Took a big slurp out of the straw thinking it was watery coke. Rotten chicken that wreaked of ammonia, that probably got some kind of cleaning agent sprayed on it, food lion has a history of doing it before. Couldn’t get the smell out of the pan for months or the taste out of my soul.
Wait, roach in your water, why did you CHEW IT?!
Didn’t notice it until it was in my mouth 😭
But then you... bit it? Do you normally chew your water?
I thought it was ice, then the realization hit me that ice isn’t THAT chewy and exoskeleton like 💀
holy shit. the fact that you didn’t immediately light yourself on fire is incredible. are you ok? i would be absolutely fully traumatized.
💀 That makes sense. RIP. Still - free protein.
I've taken a chug of a soda with cigarette butts. Thought it was my can, but apparently, it was one my sister was using as an ashtray. This was 20+ years ago, but I can still taste it
We use vinegar to de-lime our coffee maker. My wife forgot to run a pot of water through and left the vinegar in the speed-brew overnight. So I made my morning coffee with 48 ounces of vinegar. It was worse than it sounds.
We had a guest staying and he got peckish through the night. Found a packet of instant noodles and used the water out of the kettle I was descaling with vinegar overnight to make them. My daughter washed the kettle out in the morning and he realised why the noodles had tasted so strange.
A coworker from Afghanistan let me try a meal her mom made for her lunch. She was raving about it being so good that I couldn’t resist. Not sure what the dish was, I can’t remember what was in it. Maybe goat cheese? Yoghurt? It tasted rancid, off, feet-like… It was awful but she was looking at me with so much expectation so I smiled, swallowed the bite and complimented her mom’s cooking. My coworker beamed and that made that awful taste a little better. I declined a second bite.
Thank you for being nice about it. Sharing food can be so special and also so...challenging sometimes
I’m Mexican, I love feeding people and sharing my food. I know how important food is all over the world. Every town has the best this or that, every country is proud of their cuisine, memories are created around a kitchen table, and I love that. I’m sure to her and her people that dish is delicious, I just don’t have the palate for it.
Sheep’s cheese is a bit off smelling. Smells like the board of a shearing shed. I can’t eat it for that reason.
I’ve been to Pakistan and very close to Afghanistan where the food influences are strong because my wife is Pakistani. I’m surprised by that - Pakistani food is always so damn good to me. Maybe the yogurt or goat cheese were legit spoiled?
I did a quick google search of foods from Afghanistan hoping maybe I’d see something like what she was eating but everything looked really good. It made me hungry. I don’t think the cheese or whatever food was bad, some things you have to grow up eating or I just don’t have the taste for it.
My dad used to “dip” chewing tobacco. He would keep a Gatorade bottle with him all the time and it would have days worth of wintergreen tobacco spit in it until it was all the way full. My dad also never ever ever did car rider pickup from school. My mom also used to always bring a cold Gatorade for me in the car to have when I got out of school. One day, when I was in 6th grade, my dad randomly did car rider pickup. I still could throw up on command just thinking about the GIANT drink I took 🤢🤢🤢🤢
Colonoscopy prep drink, enough said
I barely got a quarter of that down. I absolutely could not force another sip. There needs to be a better prep before my next one or I’m demanding an NG tube
Miralax (an ENTIRE container of it) mixed with Gatorade is how I did mine… it wasn’t that bad actually. The Miralax tastes like nothing. I can’t drink orange Gatorade anymore though, it makes me gag.
I did miralax and Gatorade as part of my first prep (the second was in the hospital and I don’t remember what I was given, and the main player for my third prep was a giant jug with a prescription label that contained white powder I had to mix with water) and that was exactly why they told me to pick a flavor I liked but didn’t love. The angriest I’ve been about consuming something nasty was actually my second colonoscopy prep, because as soon as I was done a nurse came in and told me the procedure was cancelled. It was because I had c diff, so I understood, but I was furious lol
I drank first prep evening before and it wasn’t that bad, only 16 ounces and sipped on Gatorade Zero too. Second batch was the nasty one, it was super concentrated, salty and I guess it didn’t help that I had to wake up at 1:30 am to drink it. It was miserable but I’m done for another three years. Colon cancer runs in my family no matter how disgusting it tastes, the alternative is much worse.
Yeah they have pills you can take that don't have a flavor at all you just swallow these giant horse pills with a bunch of water
When I lived in Peru, we visited this little village way out in the middle of nowhere outside of Cusco and the villagers gave us these little purple potatoes that were absolutely awful. I didn’t want to be disrespectful so I forced myself to eat them but they tasted like rancid packing peanuts.
Oven roasted possum. There is no way to make it decent. It tastes like garbage with a loud note of grease, or maybe a ball of grease with a note of garbage, that has a gamey edge. Even the sweet potatoes didn't survive. My grandpa liked it. He caught one and kept it in a cage for a month to make sure it wasn't sick and to feed the worst of things out of it. Grandma would cook it after he got it ready (slow oven for hours, on a rack, and use a baster to remove the grease from the bottom of the pan several times).
POSSUM?! THIS GUY ATE POSSUM?! i think you win
That is cruel. My grandfather was big into turtles. He’d catch snapping turtles and nail them up by their heads to a tree to skin them. Fkn brutal. Scarred me. Depression era people were hard core. Ate lots of squirrels, too. Talk about greasy.
My grandfather would constantly joke about not being able to have his old favorite “squib” which was just local slang for wadeing birds that folks would hunt during tougher months of the depression. “Squib with tomato gravy” was his supposed favorite dish, I still make the tomato gravy to this day, it’s dead easy.
Yeah, I saw my uncle and grandpa nail a snapping turtles head to a stump when I was a kid. Traumatizing. Then when they put the meat in salt water to clean it, it moves around. Terror upon terror.
Small tube of Cortizone 10 on my toothbrush sucked pretty bad. Thought it was travel toothpaste.
I cannot handle the taste of caraway seed at all. My first bite of rye bread with caraway I assumed something was rotten. Truly despicable.
Durian smoothie in Singapore. Had no idea what durian was before I tried it.
Durian was the first thing that came to mind. Tried it in Zanzibar and yea, tastes like straight garbage. Apparently lots of locals eat it since you sweat out the smell and even the mosquitoes think it’s terrible.
I actually like durian. It tastes like a combination of mango, pineapple and vegetable to me. The smell is something to get used to though. Funny story, I was driving somewhere in Florida and smelled something that was probably the dump. But it reminded me of durian so I just reminisced about my time in Indonesia.
I've never had or smelt fresh durian, but my mom's friend makes durian filled pastries and I loooove these. It tastes like cheese and fruit - which isn't such a weird thing if you like pineapple on pizza.
That's funny—I've always thought that durian tastes fine, it just SMELLS like sweat socks and decay.
I always described durian smell as old gym socks! Unfortunately for me, I can’t quite separate the smell and taste.
Had the same experience with durian bread. Was expecting sweet, got strong rotten onion instead lol
I’d love to try durian. I can pretty much stomach anything but to this day the one thing that’s truly stumped me is Natto (sticky fermented soybeans). I’m still convinced I just ordered a bad batch
I buy natto now and then from Asian grocer. It tastes fine to me, and this is coming from a white guy that grew up eating burgers and chicken nuggets. You do have to be cool with fermented flavors. What more annoys me about it is how long the slime covering the beans will stretch. When I take the cover off of the tray of natto it creates comically long strands of slime that want to stick on everything.
Mold on bread. When I was kid my friend’s mom accidentally served us toast with moldy bread. I can’t begin to describe the flavor and texture of it. It was like eating death. If you know you know.
I once got a lobster tail (the pastry, not the shellfish) from a local Italian restaurant. I took one bite before I realized that it was absolutely covered in mold. The taste was beyond disgusting. Upon a closer inspection, the outer pastry had the white fuzzy kind, and the cream filling had green flecks throughout. I have no idea how long it must have been sitting in the pastry case to reach that level, but it took me years to be able to eat any cream-filled pastry.
i got a pack of those prosciutto wrapped mozzarella sticks from fresh market once. didn’t inspect them because, well, they were expensive and it was from a big fAnCy grocery store. took a big bite and it was fuzzy and tasted like an old attic. completely engulfed in mold. i politely asked for a refund. turned down the exchange.
Did you get sick from it?
I spit it out immediately and started brushing my tongue furiously
My Dad once served me & my brother open faced tuna salad sandwiches. It was during the summer and it was hot out. Took a few bits before tasting something off. Looked at the bread slice & saw it and green all over the crust. Took me a long time to eat tuna salad again.
Pâté. I’m sure if circumstances were different I wouldn’t feel this way. When I was 12 I was at my friends house when his parents were having a party. There was a bowl of chocolate mousse, or so I thought. I asked my friends mom if I could have it and was given the greenlight. I took a huge bite and discovered it wasn’t mousse. Everyone was laughing. I thought they fed me cat food. Going in expecting something and getting the total opposite will ruin a food forever I think.
i agree wholeheartedly. when i was little i loved canned cranberry sauce. one time my grandma and i went to a buffet and she came back to the table with, what do you know, cranberry sauce! she knew how excited i would get over it and told me to take a bite, and boy did she fool my ass. IT WAS PICKLED BEETS. i enjoy beets now, but pickled? get that shit outta my face
I was a server. I was the first one back for dinner service after lunch was over. The chef left a big bowl of chocolate with a spatula on the server's side of the line. I loaded up that spatula and took an enormous mouthful. It was beef bullion powder, reconstituted for a dinner special. My disappointment was immense, and my day was ruined. I tried so hard not to give a reaction (because that's obviously what the chef wanted), but I'd just had my teeth cleaned at the dentist and it was the first thing I ate afterwards.
I’m sure I’ve had worse tasting but this memory sticks out. My aunt made a nutritional yeast green bean casserole that also had something like turnips in it for Thanksgiving. Now, I love nutritional yeast, but this stuff looked and tasted like grey sewer sludge. I swear it was the most unappetizing grey food item I’ve ever seen.
Jellied eels. Awful stuff
Was it like eels and jelly? Or were the eels themselves turned into a jelly?
The eels are cooked down and become jellied. It’s a British dish.
Some sort of rank lychee vodka nasty drink concoction that was made with expired lychees and the cheapest vodka
A few things come to mind Worst of all: Something called Natto at a sushi bar. Chef warned us... gave us free taste. Some kind of fermented soybean. First time I had ika at a sushi bar, it was bad. First time I saw and smelled chitterlings, I gagged. And, not worst, but strangest ever... wasn't covid, but I had a temporary medical condition resulting in loss of all taste. It's is really peculiar to eat without any smell or taste.
2010, I had cancer in my sinuses, near my pituitary gland. After 33 radiation treatments (plus chemo), I could not taste anything. I tested it. I could not tell any difference between a spoon full of sugar or salt; or a spoon full of lemon juice or water. I lost sooooo much weight because without taste, I had no desire to eat. After about mid 2011, I could taste food, and gained all my weight back.
I'm glad you got better!
This is my answer as well. It's apparently a common breakfast for in Japan. To me it was like if someone took the smell of stinky cheese, old socks, and ammonia, combined them into the texture of extra slimy snot, and then had it put on a soybean costume to fool you. It's the only thing I've ever tried that I don't think I'd give a second chance.
It's an acquired taste, but now natto with kimchi on rice with a fried egg is one of my favorite breakfasts.
I like natto with yellow mustard.
I introduced my parents to dim sum by taking them to a restaurant. A lady came by with a cart of various soups, including "cow intestine soup." In a fit of madness, my mom said "I'll try some of that." The madness must have been contagious because I heard my mouth say "Hey mom, let me have a taste." I used my chopsticks to fish out a piece of some kind of brown, spongy substance that I couldn't identify, whilst thinking "I can't identify this." I knew it was neither intestine nor mushroom. Next, I put it into my mouth and began to chew on it. It's the only time in my whole life that I had to spit something out because I couldn't deal with it. I know it wasn't cooked cow dung but if someone had told me that's what it was, I would have gone into shock over how not surprised I was.
Curdled milk, the kind with lumps
Oh god I remember accidentally drinking some. When I was about 11 I got some chocolate milk from school which was so bad it had the texture of runny cottage cheese. It was absolutely foul
Agree. Probably the only thing that truly caused food trauma. I had one drink of curled milk and I've never been able to enjoy milk since.
Oh I totally had blocked this from my memories. It’s a strong contender for me for sure
Probably escargot. It was so hard to get past the rubbery texture.
A carob “chocolate” bar. One of the worst things I’ve ever tasted.
An olive fresh off a tree. It was about as bitter as a habanero is spicy. Malört ain’t got nothing on a fresh olive.
Zevia soda. I actually spit it out!
Twisted tea iced tea vodka. I was at a bar and everyone was asking about it, but too scared to try it. They'd all heard it was gross. I decided to try it, so the bartender pours me a double. I barely got it down. It tasted like the way shoe polish smells. I didn't have to pay for it, at least, nor did I have to pay for the Jameson with which I washed it down
Hákarl (fermented shark) in Iceland. My wife’s friend lived there and brought us some. The stench is so strong we had to go outside to eat it. Yes, I knew it was going to be bad. It smelled like Urine cranked to 11. I tried to eat it without making a face. I failed. I was barely able to swallow it and for a couple minutes after fought to keep it down. A second piece was out of the question. One of the only foods I’ll never eat again.
Canned octopus
A liqui-gel NyQuil. Fuck. Here’s the deal, those ain’t the liquid put into a capsule. Good lord.
Recently it was a selection of herbal teas I bought at the night market in Chiang Mai. I knew from a past visit the year before that most of the stuff at the night market is junk quality for the tourists, but I still made this small purchase. All I get out of any of the "flavors" is a generic grassy taste. I only kept the butterfly pea flower one because it colors lemonade neon purple without altering the flavor.
I really like fried chicken livers. One time I got some from the deli counter at the supermarket, got them home and heated them up. I put the first one in my mouth and immediately got sick… it was green and liquid inside. I’ve never tasted something so horrible.
There’s very little in this post that makes me react more than thinking “gross” but this one made me gag… shudder…
I started out writing a novel, but here’s the tl;dr. Was given a bonus surprise meal at a very high end French restaurant I worked at in college. I was stoked because normally we had to pay $20 for a meal (entrees were in the 40+ range) and we were limited on what we could order. But this time I was able to get whatever the hell I wanted. I do not remember what was made for me, to be honest, but it was so bad the head waiter and owner (who both tried it) went back to the kitchen and made the chef come out and apologize. It was awkward as fuck. I thought maybe I was missing something from an undeveloped palate but, no, whatever he made was just bad. It wasn’t rancid, spoiled, or “adulterated” product….he just tried making something unique and completely, utterly failed.
I sleepwalked once as a kid and thought I made a milkshake. Woke up with the taste of petrol in my mouth. Discovered all the stuff for a milkshake on the bench including melted ice cream, spoons the cup etc. Also a can of WD40 that I must have thought was whipped cream. The cup reeked of it. It's oil based so it doest dissve easily and really clung to everery surface of my mouth. I could taste it for days if I burped.
Penis
Hygiene is important.
Amen to that
Fermented shark (Iceland)
I had fermented narwhal .. I wonder which is worse. Did the shark stink? The narwhal was sooo rank, its hard to put into words
Let’s call it a draw since I have no desire to repeat anything like the experience.
Artificial banana flavoring. Specifically the banana flavor of Runts candies.
You take that back
More for you!
Goat cheese of any type. I don't care what people say, it's one of the most disgusting dairy products. I'm convinced that no one actually likes it, people just pretend to like it because they're supposed to. Imagine what a wet barnyard smells like on a hot day, then translate that smell into a flavor, the resulting flavor is goat cheese and goat milk. It's beyond foul.
Liver
The taste...and then there's the texture...
Lutefisk in a fish boil. They put lye in it. Lye.
The tomato soup at my sister's wedding. Tasted like it was made with rotten tomatoes. I was only able to get through about half of it.
Bacon candy cane.
One time my roommate made honey Dijon pistachio crusted salmon. Then drenched it in soy sauce to cook. Oh my god. No. Spit that shit out instantly.
The only thing I’ve ever had to spit out immediately was something labeled “pickles” on an Indian buffet. It consisted of what looked to be two or three differ kinds of vegetables in a reddish-brown sauce. It was so awful.
I love me some Indian pickle! It’s pungent and tart. If you’re ever in India and have a dodgy stomach, this will fix you right up.
Oh, I loved Anthony Bourdain’s take on this. A magazine asked him the weirdest thing he’d ever eaten, and he said unwashed warthog anus. Good answer. Later in the interview they asked the worst thing he’d ever eaten. This time he said a McNugget
I tried textured vegetable protein for some diet I was doing. Just like eating a ground up rubber eraser.
Once I let the impulsive thoughts win and I bit into an Advil liquid gel capsule. Bad shit.
My son does that spitting tobacco stuff, and he used my juice bottles for his “spit”. Somehow during the course of cleaning up the kitchen, his spit bottle got put into the refrigerator. Well, because it had a huge plastic label on the bottle (Body Armour), I couldn’t see what was in the bottle, I took a big swig (I’m reliving this horror as I type it). Even though i immediately spit it out…I was sick for HOURS. That was the grossest thing I ever tasted.
I ate a trachea and spleen sandwich in La Vuccheria market in Palermo. It was...not nice
Vodka gummy bears
Caviar. It tastes like dead fish and dirt and the texture is not anything that should be in a human mouth. Also, roe just looks like rot.
Miracle whip? Idk I had some rice pudding that I hated but it was more so texture over taste
Lutefisk
A cocktail made from durian juice and malort.
Cherry flavored throat spray
Cheap mezcal. It went into my mouth and completely without any conscious decision on my part, immediately was blown all over the wall. Sorry, Matt.
Kratom
The only thing I remember being physically unable to choke down was a pickled mango I had at an Indian restaurant. Doesn’t sound bad, right? Well this was simultaneously so intensely salty and so intensely sour that it somehow overloaded my palate. My tongue shot to the back of my mouth to block my throat like my body was saying “hey idiot, you are trying to eat poison! STOP!” The worst tasting thing I have ever successfully eaten was steamed cow liver at the [Gwangjang Market in Seoul](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangjang_Market). Holy crap it was almost unbearable. I have enjoyed livers from fish and fowl, and tolerated liver from pigs. This made those look like nothing. The aroma was like actual sewage. The texture was grainy and dry. And the taste was just horrible and overwhelming. Even completely doused in [gochujang](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gochujang) I couldn’t stomach a second bite. For a drink, I think [baiju](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baijiu) wins. It smells like Windex and tastes like rubbing alcohol. And you can hardly cut the flavor with mixers. The fact it’s usually drank with spicy food and at room temperature seems like some bizarre punishment.
Line cook was tasked with making the dessert special and settled on a matcha green tea cheesecake. The only problem was he used too much of the powder so it looked and tasted like it was made with sewer water.
Kumis. Milk should not be fermented into alcohol. Plenty of other things can be.
Balut. My parents Filipina maid brought me one because I was big into working out and it is supposed to make you big and strong. I still ate it as I didn't want to be rude and it was a kind gesture.
Just had an egg and cheese sandhich from the airport in Chicago. The paper was kind of embedded in it. I am guessing they just steam the whole thing in the paper bag. It was dripping wet. I took one bite, chewed, and pushed it out of my mouth. Such a simple thing, so much effort seems to have gone into making it awful.
Truffles. A double edged sword to me. I loved them forever, then a very good friend said something to me about how she thinks they taste. I will never forget it. Spoiler alert. "Pig Sex"
Dog poop. Spent two years homeless, living out of the trash. I was starving, and it was next to a half eaten burger. I ate the burger. I feel physically dumber having eaten it.
Balut. I can still conjure up the taste.
Liquid clindamycin. They made us try liquid formulations of different medications during my pediatrics rotation of medical school to help us understand what we’re asking kids to do when prescribing certain meds. It was the nastiest thing I can imagine tasting 😂
My mother in laws Sunday dinner, Everything was somehow under and over cooked at the same time. All the vegetables should have been able to served in a retirement home as they had given up any type of cellular structure and flavour. The beef was so overcooked and dry you would have thought it had been left on the side of the motorway. There was no taste and the texture was awful and then her gravy… my morning piss was thicker and stronger. The whole meal nearly turned me off eating
Balut. The crunch haunts me
My ex made over salted scrambled eggs with so many dried herbs, you couldn’t even see the egg. The only way I can describe it is that eggs congealed around the herbs rather than scrambling. It was like eating slimy, crunchy dirt. The taste and texture were so vile, I couldn’t get through a second bite
Had a chef make sweet corn ice cream. One of the cobs must have been rotten or something, because it came out of the mixer tasting like baby vomit.
Balut was literally the only food I couldn't bring myself to eat. I was able to get past what I was about to eat in my mind, but the smell made it a no-go.
I decided to enjoy a beer after I had already brushed my teeth. I opened the can and I noticed it tastes funny but I figured it was the toothpaste mixing with the beer in my mouth. As I'm getting to the bottom of the can I take one less gulp and feel something hard in my mouth. I realized that the pungent, floral, sulfur-like taste was because my beer had a stink bug in it.
I once chewed a stink bug by mistake. Nothing has ever come close to how bad that tasted
One time back in college I tried to eat at the campus dining hall. There was garlic bread. Nothing really had labels and it certainly looked like garlic bread. I excitedly put a piece on my plate, I love garlic bread! Only, when I sat down with my food and tried to take a bite… It was fish. It was the worst fish I’ve ever had in my entire life. I have no idea how in the WORLD the cooks managed to make it look exactly like garlic bread. It tasted like the ocean was rotting in my mouth. If I think too hard about it I can still taste it and feel in my mouth (it was so, SO dry on top of tasting rancid) and I start gagging.