The most exotic food you have eaten traveling?

[Mandarin]

have had the usual suspects - horse-meat sashimi, deep-fried shrimp heads, fugu - but the weirdest one I've tried was a whole fish eye, served intact from the fish head.

I'd eaten all the meat off the fish head, and my hosts gasped when they saw I'd left the eye. At their encouragement I tried it and it turned out rather nice - like a delicious fatty globule of marrow. They had injected it before baking with a mixture of soy sauce and sugar. Fortunately I had missed out on that part of the preparation otherwise I might never have got it past my teeth.

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For the Chinese, the fish eye is the best part of the fish! My grandmother used to swoop in with her chopsticks, practically before the plate hit the table.

[melamed]

nothing too exotic has come my way. I have eaten turtle shell pudding from China (by mistake). Duck tongues which look awful but taste pretty good.

Jelly Fish I popped into my mouth thinking it was noodles. My husband has eaten Crickets stuffed with french fries and bee larvae

pretty tame compared to the rest of the list here.

[Kouign Aman]

Since my last post,

chicken feet (locally)- I just cant get past the texture. The munchkin was ok w that but didnt like the sauce

blood sausage

'lamb fries' in New Zealand

Sweetbreads in LA

squash blossoms (havent eaten too many kinds of flowers before)

fresh rambutan (its exotic over here, anyway)

Most of these arent wildly exotic, just not familiar to me.

[Jacquester]

Alligator nuggets, and though not as exotic, I love saying it: Yak in China

[lesliec]

Kouign, the 'lamb fries' you had in New Zealand was probably lamb's fry, which is just liver. Why it's called lamb's fry is obscure - maybe because it comes from a lamb and you fry it. Not one of my favourites, at least prepared like that ... bit rubbery.

On my 'exotic' list - flying fox/fruit bat in Vanuatu. Not a very distinctive taste, although not unpleasant, with very unusual bones. And deep-fried rabbit ears this year at El Bulli. They were nice - very crunchy, taste not unlike light pork crackling. Anybody want to contribute to my Fund for Deaf Rabbits?

Bye,

Leslie

[Kouign Aman]

A bit rubbery, yes that describes the meal well. It was chopped into small bits, in a sauce.

You eat the ears, I'll eat the rest of the rabbit. Glad I could help.

[BonVivant]

i find alligator steaks dry and a bit rubbery maybe i should give it another go.

having read this entire thread i realised i've had quite a things mentioned. love alpaca, like yak. and African wild meats such as kudu, spingbok etc etc.

looking forward to eating local (exotic) meats along the line of guanaco, rhea, beaver, lamb, and king crab. this december, in Patagonia.

[sazji]

I'll try any tropical fruit, durian rambutan mangosteen, bring it on. I've eaten grasshoppers and fried mealworms. I liked them. I'm curious how fried spiders and scorpions would be but am put off by the "sklork factor" (i.e. the sound effect for the organ-filled body popping like a hot grape in my mouth).

The most revolting meal I ever had was lamb head and feet boiled together with instestines and "tripe pockets" stuffed with rice and sewn shut. I know it's a popular dish in the E. Mediterranean but tripe is the one organ meat I just can't stomach. So to speak. The smell infuesed everything else in the pot (which normally wouldn't have bothered me at all) and seemed to come out of me for 3 days afterwards. Eating the septum of the sheep's head was interesting - like crunchy mutton.

I enjoyed pig uterus in a Cambodian restaurant. Ate congee with baked pig's blood, didn't do much for me. It tasted like liver with more iron.

I was at a Cambodian celebration with friends, one of whom was one of those special vegetarians who feels the need to announce her vegetarianism at every opportunity. "What does this have in it? I'm vegetarian. This looks interesting...but I'm vegetarian, I can't eat that. If I ate that I'd be sick for a day, I'm vegetarian, I haven't eaten meat for 14 years." Etc. So we came to this dish that looked like some sort of noodles. It was delicious. My friend took some too even though it had some bits of pork in it. "I'll pick them out," she said. As we ate, I looked more closely at the dish; the texture on the "noodles" made me suspect that they were a bit more protein-packed than noodles, and I mentioned this. "No, they're just noodles..." she said. I decided to ask the hostess. She was clearly being evasive. "Oh, you like that one...?" "Yes, what's in it?" "You like that one, I didn't think you like that one..." "I love it. What is it?" "Oh, that one...it's made from pig skin!" The look on my friend's face was priceless, then she said "Oh well, I didn't know so it's okay."

[zoe b]

Thirty years ago we were camping in Mexico--stayed for a few weeks in San Blas, which at the time was a sleepy little village with one hotel and a campground for riff raff & surfers.

The bar at the campground was dirt cheap so everyone drank there, & we made friends with lots of townspeople.

There was a big feast one night & we were invited--a giant turtle had been caught & was made into a stew--everyone enjoyed it thoroughly--except us--it was incredibly gelatinous & gristly & greasy--just awful.

Lately I tried unborn eggs--we had a bunch of non-laying chickens, and our niece's African-born husband was appalled that we wouldn't eat the old ladies.

He butchered them beautifully--but he BBQed them, and they were truly tough--you could barely bite into the meat. But he sauteed the unborn eggs, & they were delicious.

[Peter the eater]

Kouign, the 'lamb fries' you had in New Zealand was probably lamb's fry, which is just liver. Why it's called lamb's fry is obscure - maybe because it comes from a lamb and you fry it. Not one of my favourites, at least prepared like that ... bit rubbery.

Lamb testicles are sold as "lamb fries" here in Eastern Canada. There's no mistaking them fresh-wrapped on a styrene meat tray. They usually come in pairs, for obvious reasons. I've not bought them yet but will do one of these days -- I hear they have a mild nutty taste . . .

[Peter the eater]

Exotic food while traveling?

Hmmm, fresh calf brains in rural France was a pleasant surprise.

I had delicious campfire rattlesnake with a bunch of Navajo hunter/cooks near Four Corners.

[sebastian wilde]

i dont know if its exotic or not.. so stingray.

[Carolyn Tillie]

Turtle eggs in Panama (now illegal), horse carpaccio in Barcelona, camel and zebra in London, and insects in Los Angeles.

[nickrey]

I suppose it depends on what you call exotic. I've eaten stingray, sea slug, crocodile, Thompson's gazelle (at the Carnivore restaurant in Kenya), various snakes, emu, the list goes on.

In Hong Kong, I once caught the lift in a huge Chinese restaurant to the wrong floor. This was apparent as I was the only gweilo there.

Not one to miss a challenge, I proceeded to order from the menu. Most of the food was both interesting and palatable.

Despite eating chicken's feet for many years, I didn't really enjoy the duck's feet as I found little in the way of meat and the webs got caught in my teeth.

[xxchef]

1. Casu Marzu (maggot infested cheese), Italy - didn't care for it and the after-taste still haunts me
   
2. Tripe Sausage, Paris - boring, boring, boring with a little too much white pepper
   
3. Snoot Sandwich (fried pig's nose (complete with whiskers) and potato salad on Wonder Bread), St. Louis - no, not everything deep-fried is manna from heaven despite tossing the bread away before starting on it.
   
4. Rattlesnake, right here on our Ranch - tastes like frogs legs.