Food You Don't Like...

photo of "uni" (sea urchin) by Inside-Japan

You know how there's some foods out there that people have a hard time with? I'm not talking about the "weird" stuff we usually write about. Stuff like ... dried coconut. I know so many people who just can't stand it. They won't even eat German chocolate cake (one of my favorites) or Mounds candy bars, because of the coconut. Then there's stuff like, oh... licorice, cinnamon, kimchee or sea urchin (uni), that many people refuse to try. Or they try it once and give up. Imagine if they did that with sex -- which is always bad the first time.


photo of kimchi

My dad has this thing with rye bread. He can't eat it. No rye bread. Could never figure that one out, it's just bread! The whole family picks on him because of it. He eats everything else though. Maybe a bad childhood experience involving rye bread?

Other people have problems with cheese. Some people don't like fish. I knew one guy who refused to eat anything green. (I have the opposite problem -- if there's nothing green on the table I get grumpy and my appetite shuts down.)

So, I'd like to start a list here of foods people don't like. The more non-logical the better. Don't like spinach, or pickles with peanut butter and bananas, or licorice chewing gum? Have you ever met anyone who doesn't like pizza? Tell us about it ... comments below.
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Snake + Cake

There is a restaurant at 115 Xingfu Road in Shanghai called Lin Lin. Lin Lin specializes in fresh snakes. It's a small, divey place and in the little courtyard behind the kitchen there's a stack of cages that hold several species of live snakes.

The waiter walked us back there to check them out and we pointed to a few of the big ones he said were the tastiest. He put some heavy thick plastic gloves on and pulled them out. With strong scissors he simply cut their heads off, and threw the bodies into a bucket. The headless bodies writhed and wriggled as blood spewed out from the top. We licked our chops and went inside.


photo by Safety Scissors

The snakes came stir-fried in a spicy mix of vegetables, chili and oil. Tastes like frog.

We were happily eating away at this when we noticed at the other table there was quite a loud party going on. Red wine, snakes, and ... a birthday cake. The party was getting louder to the point of obnoxious. Then one of the drunken gentleman came over and toasted with us -- his English was decent, but obviously he doesn't interact with foreigners often. "My two friends, it's their birthday. They are policemen! Policeman birthday! hahah!" (I think he was quite proud that they were police ... at first I was like, so what's the point? Police need to eat too...)

Anyway, a few minutes later we were standing and toasting beer and wine with these guys, and singing happy birthday songs. Then came the cake. We were given big slices of chocolate cake with white frosting. We thanked them, set the cake down on our table, and continued to eat our snake dish.

A few minutes later, the gentleman came back, blushing, and said "you should eat the cake now (wink wink). It's time to eat the cake. We are eating cake now."

"Ah yes, we will, after our snake," I said.

"You should eat cake now. We eat cake together," he said.

So we did. Cake + snake. Yum.

People from The West are uptight about what courses to eat when. Dessert goes at the end. Count me as one of those people. Cake and spicy snake don't mix. Neither does red wine with spicy snake, or light beer with cake, for that matter. But now things were completely out of control and they were all mixed up together on our palates and in our bellies.

I have a Shanghainese friend who likes to drink chocolate milk with her spicy fish. Just the thought makes me ill.

We survived. Tummies full, we bid farewell to the birthday police and walked down to Logo bar and partied with Safety Scissors, Ben Houge, and Nosaj Thing.

Pig Hoof vs. Turtle

We were up in Beijing with our favorite new band Reptile & Retard, and across the alley from the Boat club (awesome frozen mojitos!), we grabbed a nice meal at the Qingdao Restaurant. Qingdao is a city on the coast of North-East China, and it's most known for the main Chinese export beer "Tsingtao" which is the old spelling of "Qingdao" and should be pronounced "ching-dow", not "sting-tow"... The other thing Qingdao is known for is seafood, and we had some fine fish here, but I'm going to tell you about the weird stuff -- Pig Feet, and a cute little Turtle that ended up in my mouth.



The turtle -- I got to pick it out myself, alive -- was marinated in a wonderfully complex smokey tea sauce. There's not much meat on this little guy, and lots of bones, but what we did eat was super delicious! Such a bold and curious flavor. We turned it over, upside down, and ate the bits of meat from under the shell. Then we nibbled on the little creature's head and neck. Good juicy bits there!


Retard eats the pig hoof.

Then we ordered a massive plate of pig hooves, or pork feet. These were truly disgusting, but delicious. They're full of cartilage, tendon, fat, bone, and more fat. Reptile, the singer in the band, wouldn't eat them. Then Retard did after some beers, and finally Reptile dove in and enjoyed it. Crazy guy! (If you're in Denmark, go see them play live.)


Reptile eats the piggy foot.

We followed up the dinner with an awesome party at The Boat.