I think I'm a fairly adventurous eater. There are only a couple of things I can think of that I won't try. Tuna, for instance. And I remember for a while in my childhood I was insistent that I didn't like Nutri Grain without having tried it. Imagine if tuna turns out to be like Nutri Grain! What a loss. But I don't think so. Tuna gives it's seedy self away by STINKING. See earlier post. I also decided to opt out of trying cocarech- cow lungs all mushed up - while I was living in Istanbul. Anyway, having been pretty bold in my time, I thought I'd use this experience to post a list of suggestions of things not to try.
1) Tarantulas- the abdomen. Many a traveller on the bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, has had the pleasure of getting off at the rest stop where you can buy tarantulas. By the kilo. When they realised I wanted only one they laughed and gave it to me for free. The history of eating tarantulas in Cambodia is a sad one-- when the people were starving under the Khmer Rouge they determined that anything was up for grabs. But these days the highway town of Skuon does a trade in breeding and selling them, fried and covered in chilli and soy sauce. If you like, you can wash it down with some dubious spirit with ground deer antler for virility. Because in fact, after you munch down on a limb, you'll be glad of it. But to the matter at hand-- the legs are not so bad. They mostly taste like chilli and soy, unsurprisingly. I did see another foolish lad chomp down on the abdomen, against the warning of others. It wasn't pretty. It was white, and gooey. And he drank a lot more deer-booze than I did. So stick to the spindly, slightly hairy, but nonetheless ultimately less alarming legs if you get the chance. (NB: just read a little more on Wikipedia and apparently the abdomen contains a mixture of excrement, eggs and organs. I thought we just said that to freak him out.)
2) Balinese roti. I've had roti in Thailand and it was wonderful. I've seen people cook it this way in Java in Indonesia. And maybe I got a bad batch. But the light, buttery pancakey
mixture whipped up in front of you with fresh eggs and covered in condensed milk, bananas and/or chocolate of my previous experience was a far cry from the 'roti' I bought in Ubud. Same kind of stall/cart on the side of the road, but instead of cracking a few eggs and slathering on some melted chocolate he took a loaf of white bread, cut in half lengthways twice, fried it on all sides in butter and then spread it with condensed milk and chocolate sprinkles. The layers were then placed upon each other and fried in butter again. So much white bread. (And this was no brioche or ciabatta. Cheap, flavourless white stuff). So many chocolate sprinkles. I didn't even like those as a child. If you wanted fruit, you could opt for a squirt of some kind of brightly coloured syrup. It was all wrapped in paper and ready to go, my own little chocolate sprinkle/butter/condensed milk LOAF of bread.
To be fair, my husband thought this was kind of cool. And I think we ate it. I was kinda hungry.
3) More from the highlights of Indonesia: bakso in the dark. Bakso is made of...actually, I'm not sure. It's a soup and it has these suspiciously smooth pale brown meatballs in it. Which is not traditionally my thing. But I love to try new things that I don't quite understand
-- this is how I discovered battered, deep fried tofu balls. But my advice is not to eat bakso in the dark, and maybe not from a bus station that's a long way out of town. Cause it was a bit hairy.
4) Turkish wine. Not a food, but worth a mention. I went on a trip to a winery in Turkey within a couple of weeks of moving there. I was really excited at the prospect of trying it. Sadly, the wine that they had for tasting was basically undrinkable. And this at a tasting. In my year there, I didn't really have any nice Turkish wine. The expats warn against it. This is especially true if you plan to buy your wine from a corner shop in a relatively conservative area, as I did, and found that it was so corked it looked rather like brandy. Turkey has a wonderful food culture. But stay away from the wine.
5) Chips from Lord of the Fries. Ok, they're quite nice. But I strongly object to the way in which this franchise has gentrified the humble chip. All of the sudden they're to be bought in swanky shaped cardboard instead of humble brown paper, and they're 10 times the price. What is going on with that? How are we suckered in to this one? It's marketing genius, making a chip socially acceptable in the heart of the CBD with sushi bars and new-wave Greek food all around. And it lasts right up until you've realised that you actually just purchased and consumed deep fried potato coated in salt as an afternoon snack. As my sister rightly points out-- we are too old for this kind of behaviour. Thought it best to end with a home-grown disaster, particularly apt since I in fact ate quite a few of these devilish chippies just last night.
Next time: tippling in the theatre. Should you go there?
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