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Goa sausage. Strong smell, stronger flavor — so strong it has to be cut with lots of potatoes and onions and accompanying carbs.
I always thought it was blood sausage, but turns out that taste and smell are from fermented toddy vinegar. Ugh. One of my dad’s favorites, so we ate it whenever the real thing could be procured (from someone coming from Goa).
+1 to all these, though “vile” is too strong for my reaction, I just don’t enjoy them or understand why they are so revered. (Add all caviar with its unpleasant popping texture.)
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Funny how the topic of food dislikes/preferences comes up regularly, tho it’s usually not expressed in such a visceral manner.
I, too, cannot think of things I would consider vile, although some of the foods mentioned here (frog bits, pig’s poop chute with a better name) would possibly elicit such a strong reaction from me, and - as ever, many things listed here I consider delicacies/favorites, i.e. peaty scotch, organ meats including kidneys, caviar, bottarga, uni.
I dislike very bitter & very sweet foods, and am generally not fond of slimy, mushy textures.
I love veal kidneys in mustard sauce. I used to eat them at a French restaurant here that was opened by a French chef who used to be the American ambassador’s chef, but got tired of making burgers for the ambassador’s kids.
I’m still trying to recreate the kidney pies (not steak and kidney ) I used to eat at a restaurant in Uganda.
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I’m Goan, and used to love Goa sausages when I could tolerate the typical truckload of chillies used in its preparation.
My mother once mailed me some from Goa. I received a note from Customs saying that they had been destroyed.
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Me too. They were once on the menu of a small restaurant in a village in northern France. (that would have been just behind the British Army’s front line trench in 1916). I ordered them only to be told by Madame that they were off that day but she could offer me “ris de veau”. Now, I’d not heard of that before and had no idea what I might be getting for my main course. So, I had my first ever, but not last, experience of sweetbreads.
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I love sweetbreads too. Here’s a sweetbreads in puff pastry dish I made once.
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I don’t like surprise mustard. The kind of mustard that shows up unannounced on sandwiches, in meat dishes, in salad dressings.
I will put mustard on a hot dog, on some types of sausages in a bun, and on a corned beef sandwich.
No mustard anywhere near a roast beef, turkey or chicken sandwich, please.
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I like mustard, but only if I can control the amount. When I order e.g. a smoked meat sandwich, it is without mustard, and I put the mustard on myself. Sandwich makers usually squirt so much from their squeeze bottle that the mustard obliterates the taste of anything else.
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Speaking of mustard, one of the worst things I’ve tasted was a dessert featuring rhubarb and mustard (by a trendy at the time pastry chef in NYC) Sounded so crazy I had to try it; did not enjoy finishing my meal with bile.
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That’s known as “odori” (dance), and the prawn is supposed to be dispatched, prepped, and served swiftly to get your exact experience: the animal still twitching in your mouth - that’s the dance part. Supposedly the taste changes in moments, as the prawn dies, and after it has stopped twitching, it’s no longer a sublime experience but just a raw shrimp (which still can be quite tasty). I have never had it, although I used to want to try. I no longer think it cool, but unnecessarily morbid to take delight in an animal’s death throes.
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I love both those things!
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I’m going with “something else,” because that sounds very different from what I had, which was not sweet and tasted kind of like an angry lawn.
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SO Love that Sausage!!
I was able to help make some while there. They were all stuffed by Hand
I recall them being very spicy but not that funky, may be Pearl’s Toddy Vinegar was milder than most.
Pearl’s Toddy Vinegar
Stuffing Sausages
Drying in the sun (not my Photo)
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The most vile dish I have actually eaten is kind of embarrassing because I think it was a good dish, but I was just too whitebread to appreciate it. I ordered Laksa in a small cafe in the Cameron Highlands and the owner/chef brought out a medium sized bowl of noodles, heaped high and steaming hot. I tucked in and was shocked that it was not just sour, it was so intensely sour that my eyes just about rolled back in my head.
I think the owner had given me extra noodles because I was a big guy and the only Anglo in the cafe to boot, or so I would guess. But it was a battle to smile appreciatively and slurp those noodles up.
The funny thing is that the sickest I ever got from food was from a dish I absolutely loved, Laab Muu served in a locals cafe in Vientianne. It was pork ceviche, basically.
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I had a Lao chef make me a dish with bile once, and it is indeed ‘hard to swallow.’ Bitterness in its purist form.
I tried a glass of barberry juice from an Armenian juice bar in Glendale, CA. It was nuclear sour. Could not get used to it, so threw almost all of it out.
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Has anyone here tried Casu Martzu, the Sardinian maggot-infested cheese? Not something I would try.
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Interesting. I certainly don’t remember it as a “sublime experience”, but that might have been the case had I been given some info in advance. To me it was more like a prank at the time.
When I was a kid, I remember not particularly liking cooked red cabbage or blue fish (unless it was smoked), but I would eat just about everything else (including, usually, liver of various types and kidney). One time mom surprised us with chicken livers and hearts that she tried serving stroganoff style. That went over poorly. I know what betrayal tastes like now.
As an adult, I think the only thing I’ve encountered that was particularly off putting was natto, mostly for the texture. Flavor was fine.
I’d be hard pressed to describe anything I’ve eaten over the course of my life as truly vile, though.
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Oh dear, pork ceviche = trichinosis?
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