It
shouldn’t come as a great surprise that some of the most bizarre meals I’ve had on this planet occurred in
foreign lands. That’s because foreign food, by definition, is indeed very foreign. That
is why food and travel are always so intricately linked.
Journalist Alan Richman must certainly agree. He decided to tour the more culturally diverse restaurants of
New York City in search of the most
bizarre ethnic foods. And boy, did he find them.
His only guidelines were that the food had to be prepared in a restaurant (not someone’s house) and, it
had to be legal. He also limited the number of Chinese restaurants visited because “they offer virtually
everything.”
Richman boiled down his iron-stomach tour to a top ten list of truly bizarre food items that spanned the
globe. A few themes emerged such as appendages (tongue, penis, testicles) and innards (chitlins, kidneys).
Others fell into indistinguishable categories, such as the ever popular chicken anus. A visual image of Cheerios
popped into my head when reading about this last entrée. Ugh. Apparently this Korean delicacy is
coated with sesame seeds and garlic. Richman reports the bite-size pieces as being, “a little chewy and a
little crunchy.”
Another equally stomach turning item on Richman’s list, and the one he described as “possibly the
weirdest dish on earth” is balut. Balut is sort
of like eating a raw duck egg, except the duck egg is fertilized and allowed to develop for two weeks. The result
is a crunchy, partially developed embryo that is believed to be an aphrodisiac in the Philippines. This might
explain why I’ve never fallen in love in Manila.
When you have a moment, check out Richman’s very fine (and hilarious) article detailing these fine dishes and
others. His reporting is indeed adventure journalism at its finest. Hats off for taking us to places I, and
my stomach, would never go.