More like if you've eaten these foods you're a normal ass eater

January 5, 2020 10:14 AM

If You've Eaten 38/54 Of These Foods, You're An Adventurous Eater It's just some light relief, we all love food and food fights, don't we? The post title is the whole text of one of the comments

(I got 54/54)

posted by mumimor (199 comments total)

"Pickled cucumbers" - this is stellar trolling.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:18 AM on January 5, 2020 [76 favorites]

I’m basically the least adventurous eater ever and I checked 42. I mean, cream cheese?
posted by holborne at 10:20 AM on January 5, 2020 [21 favorites]

I mean, cream cheese?

Truly adventurous eaters will leave that one in the back of the fridge until it starts to grow interesting colours first.
posted by flabdablet at 10:24 AM on January 5, 2020 [35 favorites]

I've had all of these and this is total trolling. Bring on the casu marzu and hákarl you buzzfeed chickenshits.

(I've also had chickenshit, unintentionally, several times).
posted by aspersioncast at 10:25 AM on January 5, 2020 [40 favorites]

I got 49, and hate all seafood. Haggis is the only non-aquatic food here I haven't tried.

This is also like a checklist for class aesthetics and cultural hegemony too right? Most people I know just wouldn't have encountered some of these, they're not picky eaters.
posted by Acid Communist at 10:25 AM on January 5, 2020 [21 favorites]

I for one applaud the ambiguity in mumimor's headline.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:25 AM on January 5, 2020 [80 favorites]

I got 47, mainly because I'm not a fan of seafood or organ meats. On the other hand, I have eaten tartar steak (more than once), tongue (more than once), and pickled muktuk.
posted by gudrun at 10:30 AM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Love that snails are "snails" and not escargot but eggplant is "aubergine."
posted by Max Power at 10:31 AM on January 5, 2020 [43 favorites]

52/54 (haven't tried the fish that aren't available here)
posted by mbo at 10:32 AM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

One point for liver and another for Pâté. Trolling indeed.
posted by Frayed Knot at 10:33 AM on January 5, 2020 [10 favorites]

Also corgettes vs zucchini... Ha. Sad there aren't separate entries for garbanzo beans and chickpeas.

I did poorly as a near lifelong vegetarian. I think I had duck once like twenty years ago, during a brief foray into meat eating in my early twenties.
posted by kaibutsu at 10:33 AM on January 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

I got 49, and hate all seafood. Haggis is the only non-aquatic food here I haven't tried.

Acid Communist , if you ever go for haggis, try the wild clockwise variety. Some might not agree, but I find the taste much better than the anticlockwise variety.
posted by bluefrog at 10:37 AM on January 5, 2020 [12 favorites]

Have to admit I bailed out when I saw that entry four was cottage cheese. If that counts as adventurous, I can’t imagine what sort of lukewarm unsalted nutrient slurry you’re branching out from. Could be trolling, could be a cry for help, could just be really sad, it’s hard to know.
posted by mhoye at 10:38 AM on January 5, 2020 [16 favorites]

I want to know more about this author. Is this a genius troll? What do they eat? All their other articles appear to be lists of things to buy.
posted by rodlymight at 10:38 AM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Aubergine or courgette is what we call them this side of the pond, so probably the quiz setter speaks British or Irish English rather than trying to be pretentious.

I haven't had frogs legs (I remember a poster campaign against them in the school I went to in Belgium in the 80s) or eels - I know I went to a place in East London that had eels on the menu but suspect it was when I was a veggie. It is a weird list, mostly European class based ideas of rarity rather than food from all over the place.
posted by hfnuala at 10:38 AM on January 5, 2020 [13 favorites]

Bring on the casu marzu and hákarl you buzzfeed chickenshits.


Haggis is the only non-aquatic food here I haven't tried.


Casu Marzu and hákarl sprung to my mind as well (because surströmming is too hard to spell). lots of other really adventurous foods out there as well; like Muktuk. I personally enjoy chitlins and gizzards from time to time. Haggis is also the only one I haven't tried (including seafood), but only because I haven't had the opportunity. I love the headline too.
posted by TedW at 10:39 AM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

I feel like this was culled from a list of things "picky eaters" don't like? But "I have tried" is not "I would eat again", first of all, and "I don't have texture issues with food" is not "I am an adventurous eater".
posted by restless_nomad at 10:39 AM on January 5, 2020 [21 favorites]

You're a very adventurous eater! There's nothing you love more than trying new foods and you're not afraid to go out of your comfort zone.
No, I have just been alive long enough to have had meals in various places with various people. There are things on that list I've had once out of politeness more than curiosity. When someone's granny has spent the day cooking up what she thinks everyone will love, you eat some of everything and like it or she is sad and you are bad. I once almost cried looking at a duck's head while I nibbled bits of its muscles.

Truly adventurous eaters will leave that one in the back of the fridge until it starts to grow interesting colours first.
OK, I'll admit that just yesterday I cut the green parts off an otherwise perfectly good lump of cheese and ate it. I hate seeing food thrown away. Raised by working-class Scots who came out of the Great Depression and post-war Britain.
posted by pracowity at 10:43 AM on January 5, 2020 [21 favorites]

52/54, and the two I didn't get (haggis and black pudding) are ones I'd be willing to try, but have never had an occasion.
posted by mystyk at 10:43 AM on January 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

I haven't had frogs legs (I remember a poster campaign against them in the school I went to in Belgium in the 80s)

This would have made a good poster for that campaign.
posted by TedW at 10:44 AM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

This quiz makes me feel smrt! Perhaps I will share it and all its advertisements with my friends and smugly point out my perfect score. I love Buzzfeed.

Modern haggis is quite delicious, btw. I think it's probably the most challenging food on the list, but only because it's such a specific regional speciality. Frog's legs are the other thing on the list that seems relatively difficult to encounter as an American. Maybe eels, outside of sushi.

(We have had conversations in the past on Metafilter about how saying "I even eat this weird ethnic food!" is a form of cultural imperialism, or at least insensitivity. This list in being so, well, basic, seems to sort of fall far below the threshold of this concern. I mean if you're proud of the fact you've eaten hummus once in your life, well, I wish you a lifetime of other cultural discoveries to go with that.)
posted by Nelson at 10:44 AM on January 5, 2020 [14 favorites]

"Ass eater," eh? Is this somehow related to the "ass arm" phenomenon of 2006-7?
posted by wierdo at 10:50 AM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Frog's legs are a lot more common around Louisiana, I think. I've had them and would have them again, although I didn't find them especially exciting. Gator likewise.

I think I've had everything on the list (I'm sure I've had baklava, I just can't remember when specifically, and I've had monkfish liver, which surely counts) and a whole lot more that isn't commonly available in types of restaurants that are easy to find in the urban US. I also sort of resent the implication that, for example, not liking fish makes you not an adventurous eater. Or not tolerating dairy. Or being vegetarian. Boundaries are not the same as fears, people!
posted by restless_nomad at 10:53 AM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

Oh, I suppose it could also be a comment on British cooking, but those are hard to distinguish from trolling or a cry for help too, so who knows.
posted by mhoye at 10:53 AM on January 5, 2020 [9 favorites]

I somewhat wish I could expand that list with things I've tried that I doubt the person making the list even considered: Raclette, Fugu, Octopus, Rattlesnake, Crocodile, Mealworm, and Cricket come to mind.

(BTW, Octopus is one of the few items I've eaten *and* enjoyed that I can't bring myself to eat anymore, because they're such intelligent creatures.)

How about some simple, completely banal items while we're at it, like Movie-theater popcorn?
posted by mystyk at 10:55 AM on January 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

The "pickled cucumbers" one doesn't actually say "pickled cucumbers". There's a typo. It says "picked cucumbers".
posted by smcameron at 10:57 AM on January 5, 2020 [11 favorites]

TedW that cartoon is amazing.
posted by hfnuala at 10:57 AM on January 5, 2020

51/54 and I don't consider myself particularly adventurous. Of the remainder (snails, frog's legs, and haggis) I haven't had the opportunity to try haggis yet, and I might try snails and frog's legs if somebody else at the table ordered it but I wouldn't order it for myself.

"Black pudding" is a.k.a. blood sausage, a.k.a. soondae, kieshka, kaszanka, and so on. I think a lot of people have had it in some form or another without realizing it.
posted by ardgedee at 11:01 AM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

The buzzfeed food listicle equivalent of watching really dumb TV and feeling smug that at least you aren't as dumb as those bozos.
posted by subdee at 11:02 AM on January 5, 2020 [17 favorites]

This is just counting today right? Because that was breakfast.
posted by srboisvert at 11:05 AM on January 5, 2020 [12 favorites]

All mixed up in a bucket.
posted by flabdablet at 11:12 AM on January 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

Buzzfeed is pretty sad.
posted by Ideefixe at 11:14 AM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

This has to be trolling, unless there is a cultural or sensory issue on the author's side that I am not picking up on.

Haggis is the only one that I know I haven't had; I've just never had the opportunity to try it and have never sought it out. I am not 100% sure about monkfish -- I am pretty sure I have had it but not absolutely certain. It's certainly not something I would have tried to avoid.

but there's got to be places where most people wouldn't have eaten most of the foods on the list, no?

Probably most of the world -- it's a list of foods that in total you would easily encounter in a major western city, but not so much elsewhere, where you are going to have a subset of the list easily available but not the rest.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:15 AM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

I’ve eaten everything on the list but haggis (never had the chance), but that isn’t a particularly exciting list.
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:15 AM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Love that snails are "snails" and not escargot but eggplant is "aubergine."

I assume the author is British. Those are the basic terms we'd use.

An alternate option is the Omnivore's 100. I'm still working on the last 30% or so.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 11:15 AM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

Another one who's eaten everything but haggis. I did have the opportunity to order it once but something else on the menu appealed more. But I'm sure I'll eat it at some point.
posted by peacheater at 11:19 AM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Bell peppers? Spinach? This feels like it was generated by an algorithm?

God, I feel like I'm going to be thinking that more and more...
posted by gwint at 11:22 AM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

I ate an embarrassingly large part of that list today. And it was a pretty standard lunch. Sushi & gyoza for dinner, so...
posted by chavenet at 11:25 AM on January 5, 2020

natto wasn't on there and that's definitely on a list of adventurous things.

i have not and will not try it.

anyways i had 48. weird. i'm actually pretty picky so i think this list is flawed.
posted by affectionateborg at 11:30 AM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

I - an American who has never eaten a meal outside the US - have had all but 3 (paté, snails, blood sausage) without trying very hard. And this article isn't trying very hard either.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:36 AM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

if this is a test maybe we should start over with the Omnivore 100 mentioned above^
I'm up there but not at the end.
posted by ovvl at 11:38 AM on January 5, 2020

I ran the board but I can say I know at least one person who would score a 15 or maybe 20 on this quiz. There are a lot of people who belong in the "if it's a green vegetable/isn't from a pig or cow, I won't eat it" club, sad as it is to imagine.
posted by jscalzi at 11:40 AM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

There's very little fruit on the list. I guess the quiz creator either isn't much of a fruit eater or doesn't consider fruit as adventurous.

Because I'm surprised durian wasn't mentioned, as a lot of Westerners makes a big deal out of the appearance or smell of the fruit.
posted by FJT at 11:40 AM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

Yeah, a quick googling clarified a couple of things: 1. Buzzfeed runs essentially this article annually 2. This is just a flipped framing of a "These are common foods picky eaters avoid" list.
posted by restless_nomad at 11:41 AM on January 5, 2020 [10 favorites]

Overthinking a listicle (is this a listicle?), I am both glad that the writer didn't choose only non-European food items as "adventurous" and baffled that this doesn't state who the intended reader is.

Like this is silly if you are a resident of a city with a population of many nationalities and cultural backgrounds.
But if you did country-specific ones, this could be interesting.

In general, Koreans in South Korea are leery of cilantro, partly because of the genetic taste bud thing.
In general, Americans are leery of organ meats and non-standard animals as food (venison okay, but horse unlikely; rabbit okay but dog not).
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:42 AM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Thirty eight fifty fourths?
posted by humboldt32 at 11:43 AM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Omnivore's 100

There's a lot of stuff on that list I'm wiling to try, but:

15. Hot dog from a street cart

Nope.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:49 AM on January 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

This is just a flipped framing of a "These are common foods picky eaters avoid" list.

Ahh, ok, that makes way more sense.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:50 AM on January 5, 2020

I would also like everyone to know that I have eaten many foods
posted by ominous_paws at 11:56 AM on January 5, 2020 [13 favorites]

51/54

Bell peppers are "adventurous"?
posted by Thorzdad at 11:57 AM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

From the Omnivore's 100 list, "22. Fresh wild berries" reminds me of when I went on a hike off the Blue Ridge Parkway 30-40 minutes south of Asheville NC one early or mid-July (IIRC). This particular trail had a lot of blackberry bushes and blueberry trees growing wild along it, and on that day ripe fruit was in abundance on both. I walked and ate and ate and walked; I think I weighed more at the end of the hike than I did at the beginning. A++, would eat-walk again.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:59 AM on January 5, 2020 [10 favorites]

blueberry trees??
posted by mumimor at 12:03 PM on January 5, 2020

Some blueberry varieties get to be 6 feet tall! (Although yeah, they're still bushes.)
posted by restless_nomad at 12:04 PM on January 5, 2020

blueberry trees??

Well, they were taller than the blackberries. I don't know what the correct term would be.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:05 PM on January 5, 2020

ok, bushes it is then! Whatever, all I know is they were tasty. :)
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:06 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

I think I did it wrong. I just spent an hour trying to tick off all the foods I've eaten. The animals were hard to find on such short notice, but easy to tick off. It's relatively easy to tell when an animal is perturbed. But an aubergine? Not so much. Their secret is that they're always livid.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:08 PM on January 5, 2020 [29 favorites]

I just minutes ago ate bananas cooked in coconut milk with snails. Bring on your lists!
posted by dobbs at 12:16 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

All ass eaters are normal! Ass eaters unite!
posted by nofundy at 12:19 PM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

I just realized I've never tried rhubarb, which seems weird, but I guess I've never had the opportunity. I've seen it at the grocery but never on a menu. Would the greens be in a salad mix? Maybe I had some that way?
posted by sexyrobot at 12:19 PM on January 5, 2020

I suppose eating rhubarb greens would count as adventurous because everyone says I'm not supposed to eat the leaves.
posted by RobotHero at 12:23 PM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Next time you see rhubarb in a grocery store, buy it and make a cordial. You will thank me.
posted by mumimor at 12:25 PM on January 5, 2020

Bring on the casu marzu

"a traditional Sardinian sheep milk cheese that contains live insect larvae (maggots)... the cheese has been outlawed, and offenders face heavy fines"

Why was it banned?

"It is possible for larvae to survive in the intestine, leading to a condition called pseudomyiasis. There have been documented cases of pseudomyiasis with P. casei... the larvae feed on live tissue..."

I consider myself an adventurous eater, but botfly cheese is a bridge too far for me.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:27 PM on January 5, 2020 [18 favorites]

This seems like a good list and not trolling in any way. A list of foods like cockroach or fugu or fermented shark is a good measure of a certain kind of novelty-seeking, sure. But this is by deisgn a list of foods most of which most people (in Britain, which is where this is presumably from) have eaten. Which doesn't at all mean that most people have eaten all 54. My daughter got 38/54, which was the median response. I don't think people who have eaten the large majority but not every single one of these foods are bizarrely restricted eaters.
posted by escabeche at 12:41 PM on January 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

Love this. So much of the 'omg adventurous foods' are so obviously based on Western cultures, and I presume this is flipping that to highlight what are 'adventure foods' if haggis and avocado aren't mainstreamed into your (middle class, white, WASP, anglo, whatever) culture.

Or, yeah, it is a class thing, because I certainly know people who have *not* tried all these foods and *would* think many of the things on the list were 'disgusting' or 'weird'. But they're not middle class foodies like me so, this is a useful reminder.

Laughing at people who think cottage cheese is unusual should be the moment of provocation where we look really hard at our own food prejudices.
posted by AFII at 12:43 PM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Rhubarb makes good pie filling. You chop the stalks, cook them soft, add sugar, then somehow magically make them into a delicious pie filling along with strawberries, which gets poured into a pre-cooked pie crust and topped with whipped cream. My dad used to grow it in the back yard in Ohio when I was a kid, just to make the pies out of. The stalks are extremely tart, especially when eaten raw. I'm not even sure if you are supposed to eat them raw but I know I tasted them at least once.

I haven't had frogs legs (I remember a poster campaign against them in the school I went to in Belgium in the 80s)

There was a buffet in a nearby town whose claim to fame was their frog legs. They weren't bad but not something I'd go out of my way to get again. Kind of like dark meat chicken. They had souvenir t-shirts in their gift shop that pictured smiling, legless cartoon frogs on crutches.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 12:46 PM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

The buzzfeed food listicle equivalent of watching really dumb TV and feeling smug that at least you aren't as dumb as those bozos.

I kind of agree, though to me it felt more like eating peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon and thinking "that was a complete waste." Luckily, I have documentary evidence that a bunch of smart MFers also wasted their time in the same way, so at least I don't feel lonely.

I kept going hoping that there would be some redeeming item on the list that felt actually adventurous, but no . . . peanut butter all the way down.

The only one I haven't tried is haggis, and that's just because they aren't native to the U.S. so I haven't seen one. Lucky they had pictures, though, because there was some real boot/trunk stuff action there. I look forward to Buzzfeed's If You've Read less than 28 of These 50 Listicles You're Smarter the Internet.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 12:52 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

To both escabeche and AFII, I am truly fascinated by your comments. Half of my life I spend out in the sticks, in faraway farmland, and apart from haggis, snails and frogs legs, I think I could get everything from that list here. You can get a sushi kit in the local supermarket, and everything you need for a Thai feast. Actually, I could probably order the snails and they'd be in the store the next day.

When I was a kid, snails and frog legs were always on the menu at fancy restaurants. I don't know why, it was silly. I like both and I eat snails now and then, but it's not something I'd go out of my way for, and anyway both snails and frogs are protected species these days so it's hard to get legal bites.
posted by mumimor at 12:57 PM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

Haggis.
posted by SoberHighland at 1:07 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

47/52 very adventurous. Gotta try venison some day...
posted by supermedusa at 1:14 PM on January 5, 2020

Learning about wild haggis was worth this stupid clickbait
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 1:18 PM on January 5, 2020 [12 favorites]

to mumimor - I presume you're still in a Western context, so access shouldn't be an issue for you, but it would be for vast proportions of the globe. And even when it is not, the attitude of trying new foods, seeing foods as an experiment, and most importantly, getting over food prejudices is not a universal human experience.

It's a British list, and I sure as hell grew up in the UK hearing people telling me that snails and frogs legs were what the gross French people ate, along with mouldy cheese, what is wrong with them, etc etc etc - it takes a certain sort of person not just to access those options, but to decide to try them.

I mean, avocado is everywhere in the US & UK, but is still the butt of jokes. I imagine a lot of people feel it's not consistent with their identity to consume it.
posted by AFII at 1:19 PM on January 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

Had them all. Only about 10 of these do I consider adventurous.
posted by terrapin at 1:19 PM on January 5, 2020

I read most of these comments before clicking the link. So I expected it to be just a boring list of normal everyday foods. And I mean, on one hand it is for a lot of people, but on the other hand when I met my husband he'd either never tried much of this stuff, just tried it once and hated it, or would take a lot of convincing to get him to try it. His family probably hasn't tried much of this stuff either and probably never would.

I don't get why they put chickpeas, kidney beans, and cannellini beans all on there since I feel like if you'll eat one kind of those beans you'll most likely eat any of those beans.
posted by wondermouse at 1:19 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Reminded me we used to frequent a place here in Austin known as The Best Little Pho House in Texas...
posted by jim in austin at 1:31 PM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

I think this list somehow time-traveled here from the 1980s. I remember, late 80s, seeing an episode of the Cosby show where one of the jokes was Cosby trying to get his kids to try guacamole and all his kids (who grew up upper-middle-class in NYC, remember) being like "ew gross, what are avocados?"

As someone who grew up in a very rural area is the 80s, I remember finding this joke totally normal and relatable because I had heard of guacamole but never encountered an avocado. Similarly I didn't encounter hummus or tzatziki or wakame or a bunch of other normal foods until I moved to the big city in the late 90s.

I'm not sure whether it was more about the city or about the year, but suddenly all the food options available exploded. That Cosby show memory makes me assume it was both. Like, on the one hand it was apparently normal for NYC dwellers in the 80s not to have tried avocado. But, on the other hand, the same extremely rural area I grew up in now has both a sushi restaurant and an Ethiopian restaurant.

As for the list itself, I got 49 of 54, and all 5 of the things I haven't tried are slightly exotic meat products that I didn't encounter until after I went vegetarian (the same year I moved to the big city).
posted by 256 at 1:35 PM on January 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

Showed this to my partner. She got 52. Then I pointed out she only had to have eaten them, not actually prepare them herself... That sorted the remaining two.
posted by edd at 1:41 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

I once ate at a Thai restaurant in Budapest. The menu was in Hungarian. The wait staff's English was poor. I'm fatally allergic to peanuts. The quiz is not qualified to judge me.
posted by justkevin at 1:44 PM on January 5, 2020 [13 favorites]

Frog's legs are a lot more common around Louisiana, I think.

Inexplicably, you can also get them at the original Nathan's hot dog stand on Coney Island. That's where I had them.

....As for this list - not only have I eaten most things, I've actually made a good number of them myself. I'm claiming the extra credit.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:45 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

Why wasn't brains on this list? And witchety grubs? And green ants? Kangaroo? Phhht!
posted by b33j at 1:47 PM on January 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

Would the greens be in a salad mix? Maybe I had some that way?
Rhubarb leaves contain high levels of oxalic acid, a toxin that damages the kidneys. Not good to eat!
posted by sriracha at 1:56 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

avocado is everywhere in the US & UK, but is still the butt of jokes.

When I was growing up I didn't know avocado existed except as an appliance color that was popular in the 60's and 70's. The list of foods our mom ate (and therefore the foods she served my sister and I) was pretty constrained...I'd guess that that attitude was fairly typical of middle-class America outside of larger cities, at least in the 60's-80's and probably before and after.

In my early 20's a girlfriend introduced avocado to me (along with kale, pesto and a lot of other foods; as well as how to make decent coffee). One day she and mom had gone out for lunch; when the salad came out mom poked dubiously at the avocado asking what it was. Despite my girlfriend's enthusiastic description of how good it was mom refused to eat it, purely on the basis that she'd never had it before, so my girlfriend gladly relieved her of it.

Given my upbringing, and relatively parochial American experience as a child and teen, I'm sometimes amazed that I find food so much fun, and how much I enjoy trying foods that are new to me.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:59 PM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

That title...I was confused for a moment.

normal-ass eater vs. normal ass-eater
posted by j_curiouser at 2:11 PM on January 5, 2020 [8 favorites]

Have to admit I bailed out when I saw that entry four was cottage cheese.

Easily the grossest item on the list IMO.
posted by atoxyl at 2:21 PM on January 5, 2020 [8 favorites]

52/52, and literally everything we ate for dinner last night, for a midday snack today (fried tofu with bell peppers, spinach, and sweet potato prepared as a korma over wild rice) is on the list.

This comments thread is fascinating. By far the most exotic and challenging foods on this list that I have ever tried were haggis and black pudding. I am American, adopted by people that can reasonably said to share my ethnicity, but grew up pretty internationally, so the privilege/class critique strikes me as valid. My genetic and cultural heritage is primarily American British and Irish. I am a pink fellow who appreciates a pint.

One of the core values I was raised with was to never refuse food. If it was offered to you as food, you ate it, whether it was my mother’s liver and onions or a twenty-year-old jar of pickled herring excavated from a distant relative’s cellar following their death. In fact, I just had the not-so-great idea to use the last three chunks of fish from that jar, now at least thirty years old after a decade in my fridge, as the garnish in my martini. Don’t, um, do that.

I really appreciate the conversation this fairly silly clicklist has generated here, thank you all very much.
posted by mwhybark at 2:46 PM on January 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

Why wasn't brains on this list?

Mad cow disease, duh

Yes, of course I have eaten them, they were a regional delicacy in southern Indiana, where I spent the most time as a child.
posted by mwhybark at 2:50 PM on January 5, 2020

Heard from two different, cough, connoisseurs that kopi luwak is not that good, so have not... is it on the list?
posted by sammyo at 2:51 PM on January 5, 2020

(oops, 54, I meant. Numeric retention: not my strong suit)
posted by mwhybark at 2:52 PM on January 5, 2020

I can't remember if I've ever had sea bass or monk fish.
posted by jb at 2:59 PM on January 5, 2020

Frog's legs are a lot more common around Louisiana, I think. I've had them and would have them again, although I didn't find them especially exciting. Gator likewise.

I've had frog legs when I've killed the frogs myself. They're basically like really chewy chicken.

I've tried alligator and rattlesnake, but in both cases they were battered and fried to excess and I couldn't tell what they actually tasted like.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:01 PM on January 5, 2020

Rhubarb makes good pie filling. You chop the stalks, cook them soft, add sugar, then somehow magically make them into a delicious pie filling along with strawberries, which gets poured into a pre-cooked pie crust and topped with whipped cream. My dad used to grow it in the back yard in Ohio when I was a kid, just to make the pies out of. The stalks are extremely tart, especially when eaten raw. I'm not even sure if you are supposed to eat them raw but I know I tasted them at least once.

We used to dip raw rhubarb stalks in sugar and eat them like that as kids. It was my favourite thing in the early summer, crunchy, tart and sweet. (I should probably mention my tooth enamel is terrible! Sugar coated oxalic acid will do that to you.)

Rhubarb pie is wonderful, but the filling does require copious amounts of sugar. Although you can also combine it with raspberries or apples, for a little less shocking effect for the uninitiated.
posted by muuratsaari at 3:03 PM on January 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

Re-upping this old post of mine: What's So Offal About "Unmentionable Cuisine"? "Try Bordeaux-style grilled rats!" (I finally found a copy of this book, and it is, indeed, an interesting read.)
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:05 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Ah. I remembered 'something something rhubarb leaves'...I guess the 'something' was 'poison' not 'salad'. Hm...maybe I'll look at some recipes and give it a try...maybe in the pie form I hear so much about but have never encounterd in person.
posted by sexyrobot at 3:11 PM on January 5, 2020

A sheep is homeomorphic to a torus, etc., etc......oddly enough, I don't think I've ever had a chance to try haggis. That leaves me at 53/54.

I had agouti in French Guiana. Fairly tasty, but lots of small bones. The problem with eating agouti isn't that it's unappetizing, it's that the animals themselves are very cute. At least from a short distance--I didn't test them directly to see how bitey they might be.
posted by gimonca at 3:27 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

"Pickled cucumbers" - this is stellar trolling.

My Grandma used to say "pickled cucumbers," having grown up in a time and place where lots of stuff, esp. vegetables, was often eaten pickled and cucumbers was just one.

(I can still taste her corn relish on my mind's tongue. Mmm.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:27 PM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

My memory of gator is that it was the consistency of chewy pork but faintly fishy-tasting. As with haggis*, I'd eat it without complaint if someone set it in front of me but it's not something I like enough to seek out.

*It's pretty inoffensive really, though I'm not a fan of the lingering aftertaste of organ meats.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:33 PM on January 5, 2020

You’d think at these prices they could keep the snails out of the food.
posted by Devils Rancher at 3:37 PM on January 5, 2020 [8 favorites]

For some reason taking this quiz made me really miss my dad. I’m from a tiny ass town in the midwestern U.S and this list and discussion also made me feel defensive for any judgement folks might pass on people who don’t stray far from my hometown and probably couldn’t check a lot of these items off, though venison is an easy-peasy one. (Since I did stray far I myself look down on them, but it feels like I’m allowed to, you know? But you all better not.)

Anyway, my dad had been in the Navy and traveled a lot before having a family and during my childhood he was really excited whenever we traveled and he could introduce us to new foods. A lot of these items I probably checked off because of him. I can still see his excitement and happiness to introduce us to new foods. His strategy was to tell me that many new vegetables and fruits tasted like strawberries because I loved them. And that’s how I managed to convince myself that not only that kiwi fruits (more plausible) but avocados tasted of strawberries because he told me they did before I tried them. It took a long time before I realized that no, they didn’t really, my mind tricked me because my dad primed me to believe they did.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 3:41 PM on January 5, 2020 [10 favorites]

Re the Omnivore list:

I haven't dined in a Michelin starred place,
nor tasted kaolin (I'll ask my ceramic friends about it),
not tried Fugu but I'd be pretty curious to try it, sounds like something else.

The haggis that I tasted was delicious, I ordered seconds, (Haggis is like a form of sausage, and if you might like haggis would depend on if you like sausage + how the butcher prepared it...
(There's an implied long digression here about sausages that references Good Soldier Sveijk)),
frog legs were underwhelming (sorry frogs),
Not sure about Epoisses but I've tasted various French soft cheeses,
Lapsang Souchon tea is interesting if you like something different,
Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee is divine coffee.
posted by ovvl at 3:47 PM on January 5, 2020

When I was a kid, occasionally we'd go to the local seafood restaurant, and I would get the frog legs. They were battered and deep-fried and looked like little bitty drumsticks. But one day we were on vacation in another state and went to local restaurant. Being around 10 or 11, I assumed that things were cooked the same way everywhere, so I ordered the frog legs. Instead of a plate of fried frog legs, they brought out the lower half of a large bullfrog that had been broiled (or maybe barbequed? It's kind of hazy). My young self was somewhat freaked out that it looked kind of like a tiny human had been skinned and served up. I just couldn't eat it, and my grandparents had to send it back. Adult me thinks it was probably delicious and I wish I remembered what restaurant in what city so I could go try it.

I got 46/54, but some of them I didn't know if I should click or not. For example, I've had ducks blood sausage, but not black pudding. Do I count it or not? And I didn't know zucchini had another name until I read the comments.
posted by ambulocetus at 3:48 PM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Oh man, I have a sort of complementary experience, the thorn bushes have roses. I've lived in the San Francisco area my whole life, and consider myself a very adventurous eater. To that end, I'm learning to hunt so I can eat strange new meats that I can't buy at the grocery store. Hunting wild meat is about a million times more work and more adventure than trying something weird at a restaurant.

So far I've had jackrabbit and squirrel. My more recent wild meal was Surf Scoter. I used Hank Shaw's recipe Duck Stir Fry with Scallions.
posted by ryanrs at 3:52 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Why wasn't brains on this list?
Mad cow disease, duh
Exactly. During my childhood in the 90s when mad cow became headline news, I remember my Anglo-Caribbean grandmother telling me how delicious cow brains are and how unfortunate it is that my generation would never be able to enjoy them safely. I was just like, "um, brains? y'all ate brains?" I ate organ meat on the regular as a child, but brains seemed like a step too far, even despite their supposed deep-fried goodness.

I don't get why they put chickpeas, kidney beans, and cannellini beans all on there since I feel like if you'll eat one kind of those beans you'll most likely eat any of those beans.
That did seem weird to me too, because three- or four-bean salad has been a pretty pedestrian dish in North America for decades now. Then I thought of the people who only encounter beans in the context of chili and baked beans, and then it makes a lot more sense.
posted by blerghamot at 4:00 PM on January 5, 2020

52/54 -- no haggis or kidneys. But my brother gave me some canned haggis for Christmas, so I should be able to knock that one off the list too.
posted by briank at 4:00 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

It says "picked cucumbers".

The truly adventurous have eaten unpicked cucumbers, right off the vine.
posted by RobotHero at 4:01 PM on January 5, 2020 [9 favorites]

nor tasted kaolin (I'll ask my ceramic friends about it)

Does Kaopectate count? If so, I can tick kaolin off the list (the clay version, which now uses attapulgite, is still available for sale in Canada).

Mmm. Gritty.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:07 PM on January 5, 2020

Everyone reading this has eaten kaolin. It's in paper and toothpaste.
posted by ryanrs at 4:16 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Considering the number of us who have never had haggis, someone needs to organize a meetup.
posted by Obscure Reference at 4:19 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

the omnivore’s 100 is a better list, I still have 16 to go to complete that one!
posted by fimbulvetr at 4:28 PM on January 5, 2020

Not only have I eaten all 54 foods, I like them all.

Some unlisted foods I don't like are like rye bread, catfish and tripe.
I spat out unlisted natto because it was gross. Haggis is delicious.
posted by w0mbat at 4:53 PM on January 5, 2020

52/54 - everything but haggis and blood pudding
posted by JohnFromGR at 4:54 PM on January 5, 2020

According to this source, avocadoes were named thusly because the shape, size and the way they grow in pairs reminded the Aztecs of testicles. They might be a bit of a joke in some countries, but this makes them funny everywhere.
posted by b33j at 4:56 PM on January 5, 2020

Oh, we have quarantine in Australia. I don't think we got mad cows disease. Also I ate brains in mid 80s, maybe begore things got serious.
posted by b33j at 4:59 PM on January 5, 2020

It doesn't have to be calves' brains, I suppose; brain-eating is a thing in a lot of Midwestern / peri-Southern states, and due to BSE they've started doing it with pork brains instead. There's a diner up the street from us (here in Florida) that serves a pork brain and scrambled egg breakfast, though I suspect it's more of a "look at this wacky menu item" thing than a "people were beating down our doors demanding brains and we were out of ammunition" thing. I have never been tempted by them.
posted by lorddimwit at 5:05 PM on January 5, 2020

I don't consider myself a particularly adventurous eater, especially now because I feel like a pain in the ass that I'm on a kooky diet to try to prevent migraine triggers. But I do have a policy that I will try a small taste of almost anything and I have had the privilege to travel quite a bit.

Because of trip to Vienna this past summer, where my husband's cousin took us out for a traditional meal, I can now claim to have tried chicken hearts, beef tatare, and blood sausage. I was less adventurous in Croatia, because I don't like sea food or risotto and we were on the coast but I did enjoy ajvar and some pasticada. I had the chance to try haggis in a B&B in Scotland.

I am kinda surprised to see polenta on both these lists. It's so common in a bunch of types of food.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 5:07 PM on January 5, 2020

This feels like the thread to share my learnings last year at Mardi Gras: I don't tend to like processed meats like sausages. I typically only see alligator available for sale in stores or restaurants as part of a sausage or similar. I saw a menu with alligator strips in the French quarter and ordered some.

Learning: Those things are chewier than venison. Sure it tasted like chicken but it felt like gum.
posted by PMdixon at 5:10 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:21 PM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

I checked off everything but haggis, monkfish and frog legs.

I'm not sure about the monkfish - I could have eaten some and just not had a memorable experience with it.

I *might* have sampled frog legs at some point but if so they didn't make much of an impression.

Still waiting on a chance to try some haggis.
posted by bunderful at 5:23 PM on January 5, 2020

Everyone reading this has eaten kaolin. It's in paper and toothpaste.

I have questions. Well, just one really.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:43 PM on January 5, 2020 [8 favorites]

I've had all but around 18 of the things on that Omnivore's 100 list. There's a few items that don't fit in with the list (roadkill? kaolin?) but there are also things that I haven't heard of and want to try, Bagna cauda for one.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:45 PM on January 5, 2020

I can't donate blood because I can't prove to the satisfaction of the Red Cross that I don't carry mad cow disease. (As a kid I was given a medication made from bovine glands.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:58 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Someone has to have already made this joke, but...what's an abnormal ass eater (as opposed to a normal one)?
posted by boghead at 5:58 PM on January 5, 2020

That title...I was confused for a moment.

normal-ass eater vs. normal ass-eater

I guess you have to be older to appreciate it, but when I read this I heard Daffy Duck saying "hyphenation trouble!"

Heard from two different, cough, connoisseurs that kopi luwak is not that good, so have not... is it on the list?

Kopi luwak was fine. It reminded me of a decent Kona or maybe a high-class Kenya. But it is not worth the price--at least back in the 90's when it was like $1500 a pound, unless you have a lot more money than me. And, pro tip: I wouldn't bother smelling it before it goes into the roaster. It has a bit of a pungency that disappears by the time it's done, but I don't feel closer to the immanent for having experienced it.

An alternate option is the Omnivore's 100. I'm still working on the last 30% or so.

Now that's a listicle. I have had 72 of them, though I should award myself the three that are just there because they're ridiculously expensive. Very eclectic, though. Excellent link.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:01 PM on January 5, 2020

As it does not contain tete de veau or scrapple this list is incomplete. I have spoken.
posted by fiercekitten at 6:05 PM on January 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

I will be That Guy and take one for the team here.

25/54.

This includes some things that I have eaten SOME of at some point (olives, mushrooms, eggplant) and don't particularly care for, things that I'm pretty sure that I have eaten but can't remember exactly when (rhubarb), and things that I've eaten maybe once in my life and liked but have never gotten around to having again (pho). Not including things that I _think_ I might have nibbled at some point but couldn't even remotely tell you what it tastes like (baklava).
posted by delfin at 6:07 PM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Only about 10 of these do I consider adventurous.

It all depends on what you have access to and stomach for. I got 44 out of 54, almost all of the meat/seafood ones I won't come near. Also if you gave me this test as a 17 year old in rural Oregon, where I grew up, I would have had many many fewer. Like, I hadn't even heard of olive oil at the time (1992).

I have had haggis, but it was vegetarian haggis (in an actual pub in Scotland!) but I didn't give myself credit.
posted by JenMarie at 6:14 PM on January 5, 2020

I'll put my hand up as another timid eater - 32/54.

To the despair of the Italian side of my family, I have legendary picky taste, and sometimes eat plain white bread or plain white rice as a snack. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some level of extra sensitivity to texture or flavour involved.
posted by other barry at 6:33 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

I've got 51/54, and the 3 are blood sausage, frog's legs, and rhubarb. The first two is one of the few things I still maintain from my religious upbringing (pork & amphibious creatures), so that makes sense. With rhubarb though... how American-specific is it exactly? I grew up hearing and reading so much about it, and it's not like there aren't any American expats, but I have never seen imo any rhubarb at the supermarket or an offering in an Americana eatery. I mean, I even had faux-poutine (where it's not fresh curds) here, but I've never seen rhubarb pie. Is it a thing Americans share out of cultural upbringing, but no one really likes it enough to bring it overseas? Does it not travel well? #inquiringminds
posted by cendawanita at 6:37 PM on January 5, 2020

And haggis is delicious. don't listen to english propaganda!
posted by cendawanita at 6:38 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

54/54. Oh my god why did I read this right before dinner, almost all of these are some of my favorite foods. The only ones I don't actively like are veal, kimchi and blood pudding.

Is this some kind of weird joke because I feel personally targeted and attacked and now I want pho, fried tofu, olives, pickles, smoked salmon, hummus as some kind of wild tapas plate, maybe with some oysters with baklava for dessert.

What about ceviche or steak tartare? No sauerkraut? No jellied eel? Not even a freshwater eel sashmi?

Where's the really usual freaky food list items like head cheese, casu marzu cheese? Balut? Thousand year egg? Pickled eggs? Hákarl? Lutefisk? Durian? Natto? Fugu?

Who the hell wrote this? Are Buzzfeed's offices still in SF?

I'm personally outraged and I want to find whomever wrote this peanut butter and grape jelly with the crusts cut off sandwich of a list and taunt them with a lukewarm sourdough loaf.
posted by loquacious at 7:01 PM on January 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'm... Wow. Surely this has to be a joke, right? Pickled cucumbers? Cottage cheese?

Is it trolling, or some weird way of reassuring the average American that they're adventurous, or just a weird joke, or what?

I got 50/54, and that only because I haven't done much UK food so I've never had blood pudding or haggis or kidneys, and for some reason I never got around to trying frog legs.

But where's the actual exotic stuff? Where's the alligator and rattlesnake? Or balut? Or century eggs, or horse sashimi, or calf fries?
posted by sotonohito at 7:06 PM on January 5, 2020

This was designed by an AI Troll. via Getty Images.

Also, it's "picked" cucumbers. "Pickled"? ... what are you, mad?!
posted by not_on_display at 7:18 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

I know I'm not an adventurous eater...and I got 25/54, probably. There's a couple there I'm fairly sure I've had at some point or other, but I'm not 100% sure, a couple I only said yes to because my wife had me buy them as ingredients and I assume they were in something I ate. Some I wonder about--I've had tzatziki as a sauce in a gyro, but not as a dish in and of itself; I tried a dip of sriracha on something. Do those count? I did count them.
posted by Four Ds at 7:19 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

TIL that rhubarb came to Europe from China via the Silk Road and then Russia, and then to the USA. It’s still popular in England, where they started to eat it once lots of sugar was available, or at least it’s popular enough to be on this list.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:31 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

You know, I did this and was like "whoa, this was not very adventurous." But then I thought for a second, and took the quiz as my Mom, still alive and in her 70s, a completely reasonable person, one who enjoys food, and who I feel I have a very good idea for what she's eaten and what I've recommended that has fallen flat. 14 of 54.

We're living in a remarkable period of food diversity, and some of us have had the opportunity to try things that we never would have been able to try a couple of decades ago. Many of these things are newly available to US supermarkets - could you have bought a box of quinoa in the 80s? - and tastes follow that. It wasn't until I was 15 that the first restaurant that served sushi in our hometown opened up, and at the time, it was almost ludicrously exotic.

Some of the shock here is that modern mainstream tastes are strangely foreign to those a generation ahead. I wonder how things will look 20 years from now.
posted by eschatfische at 7:34 PM on January 5, 2020 [10 favorites]

Hm, maybe there should be a Tournament of Foods that Some People Love and Others Find Gross. I can't decide if the divisions should be based on continents, or based on my categories below.

Division 1: Strong odors
- durian
- some type of cheese (help me out here, I forget which cheese is stinky, but my mom decided to stop being self conscious about smelling like garlic from Korean food after she noted that many Americans smelled like cheese).
- stinky tofu from a Taipei night market
- ?

Division 2: Preparation (or lack thereof)
- fermented fish thing from Scandinavia somewhere?
- live octopus
- that cat poop coffee

Division 3: Textures
- natto
- other slimy foods like oysters?
- hard to chew foods like sea cucumber?

Division 4: Animals and parts of animals
- lots of options here, including the silkworm larvae that are a Korean drinking snack and could also be placed in the strong odor division

My version above is unfairly tilted toward Asian food items because those cuisines are the ones I have had the most exposure to and have had conversations with people about how much they hate that food item. Several of them I love, including natto, but I make into a version of a Korean stew because I just can't get with the goopiness.
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:36 PM on January 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Upon further reflection, divisions based on geography would address the tendency to be ethnocentric in our food preferences, as presumably geographical proximity would result in more familiarity of certain kinds of food? Such as stinky tofu and natto are both in the category of fermented soybeans and are DELICIOUS to me. Stinky tofu is so stinky and so good.
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:39 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

what's an abnormal ass eater (as opposed to a normal one)?

Never ask questions you're not prepared to hear the answers to...
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:42 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Also I would exclude animals not eaten because of religion.
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:46 PM on January 5, 2020

Spamandkimchi: Limburger cheese.

And you gotta specify large oysters. Make 'em chew it.
posted by ryanrs at 7:46 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: And you gotta specify large oysters. Make 'em chew it.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:52 PM on January 5, 2020

what's an abnormal ass eater (as opposed to a normal one)?

submitted for your approval: @dasharez0ne
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:55 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

Limburger makes a fantastic sandwich with onions and some nice sharp mustard on dark rye. Even better if you have a nice strong dark beer to go with it.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:20 PM on January 5, 2020

As others have said, it's actually a not bad list in terms of an ordinarily adventurous eater. Stuff like hakarl is not so much adventurous as stunt eating. This is "have you tried a lot of cuisines other than your own" level of adventurous, which seems silly to people who live in a diverse metropolitan area and go out to eat a couple of times a week, but they aren't necessarily the average.
posted by tavella at 8:42 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

54, and 78 on the other list, but what I want to know is: do I get extra points for having eaten both haggis and "vegan haggis" (because Toronto)?
posted by ilana at 8:43 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

In fact, that exact sandwich is the only known way to consume Limburger, which should tell you something about the smell of this cheese.
posted by ryanrs at 8:44 PM on January 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Bell Peppers?!??!

There's a lot of stuff on that list I'm wiling to try, but:
15. Hot dog from a street cart
Nope.

Best hotdogs I've ever had are served up from a cart situated in front of the local Canadian Tire.

I just realized I've never tried rhubarb

It's a common adulterant in berry pies, sometimes called out in the label and sometimes just in the ingredients.

The stalks are extremely tart, especially when eaten raw. I'm not even sure if you are supposed to eat them raw but I know I tasted them at least once.

Fresh rhubarb dipped in sugar and eaten raw is awesome.

I have had haggis, but it was vegetarian haggis (in an actual pub in Scotland!) but I didn't give myself credit.

Ya, that's not Haggis regardless of what's on the label and I can't imagine it tastes anything like a regular haggis.

Also I would exclude animals not eaten because of religion.

That's basically all animals.
posted by Mitheral at 9:04 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

My sole knowledge of limburger comes from Saturday morning cartoons, where the implication was always that it was horrid stuff - for example:

Bugs Bunny: Say chee-eese!
Yosemite Sam (scowling): Limburger.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:07 PM on January 5, 2020

52/54 - no frog legs or eels (yet)

I had haggis at an inn we stayed at in Scotland and it was pretty inoffensive, I thought. Reminded me of jaternice.

I lived a pretty typical Midwestern existence in the 80s and there are probably a dozen or more things on this list that I didn’t try until I was an adult because they simply weren’t available in my community.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 10:16 PM on January 5, 2020

Aw, the Ominvore’s 100. You’ll notice the source link is gone from the Serious Eats article, and that’s a shame. The list came from a food blog written by Andrew Wheeler (excellent LGBTQ comics person, not shitty EPA head), and I still miss his ratings on ginger beer.
posted by rewil at 10:26 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

We're living in a remarkable period of food diversity

we sure are. my latest thing is imported Latvian rye bread, which my local caters-to-new-Americans grocery has moderately mystifyingly begun to stock in its improbably huge Latvian aisle. The bread costs like $2.50 to $3.99, seems to be flown in from Latvia possibly weekly, and is AMAZING. It’s deeply improbable, probably problematic from a climate change perspective, and I aim to eat as much if it as I can before it goes away.
posted by mwhybark at 11:56 PM on January 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

94/100 from the omnivore list. No Brawn (What is?) Phal, Spatzle, Brunost, or Harissa just because they aren't around. No tasting course at *** Michelin because money..

Brawn is the cooked, usually boiled, hole head of an animal. Pig and lamb are more common. When you pick the meat, skin, fat and brain out and turn it into a terrine it's called head cheese.

I'm in an advantaged position with these sorts of list as I spent ~20 years living and travelling around the world (I'm around 90% of the omnivore-100 list). A lot of the items are staples in my kitchen.
posted by michswiss at 11:59 PM on January 5, 2020

(two more thoughts on rhubarb:

as a kid, rhubarb pie was my favorite pie, and when it was adulterated with berries or strawberries or whatever, I would carefully eat around the offending waste berries until my mother would sternly insist I eat what was on my plate. as an adult, I rarely order it in a restaurant, because it always comes with the unwanted adulterants.

Rhubarb is a prodigiously productive plant that grows annually from the same root, year after year. My neighbor has one, unwanted, in the middle of his lawn, a remnant of the last owner’s potting bed. He rarely harvests it and most years attempts to dig it out, failing each year. One year I told him I’d harvest the stalks.

Over the season, I easily cut and froze seven pounds of stalks. It’s more productive than zucchini.)
posted by mwhybark at 12:11 AM on January 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'm at 96/100 on the Omnivore list. No fugu, road kill, durian or snake.

I've eaten most animal body parts including brains, kidneys, livers and intestines. I've eaten live shrimp, raw milk, whole insects. I've eaten bear. Great roots like chayote. White and black truffles.

Sure, a lot of it comes from living in big cities and also traveling and being curious. But some of it also comes from being from a culture of poverty too. That is most people I know who have eaten a lot of offal are because they came from a poor country where it was criminal to let any part of the animal go to waste.

These days I tend toward being mostly vegetarian. For health and for ethical reasons really. I still eat meat but I try to treat it as an occasional luxury.

I also have a rule that I have always lived by: If someone invites me to eat, especially at their home, I will eat what I am served. There's a deep part of me that feels that shared eating is an important communion. And if you are offered food, you are being invited to be part of an intimate space. I know that, with no known allergies, this is something I am able to do with no compunctions.
posted by vacapinta at 1:38 AM on January 6, 2020 [13 favorites]

> Also I would exclude animals not eaten because of religion.
> That's basically all animals.

Excepting those that are completely veg*n, there are no beliefs or cultures that prohibit eating chicken. I forget where I heard that factoid but I’ve always thought it was interesting.
posted by ardgedee at 5:14 AM on January 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have only entered a room containing a haggis once, and being an insufferably picky eater, just the pungent odour was enough to drive me straight back out.

The dog, however, looked like he was witnessing the Return of Christ.
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:34 AM on January 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

Excepting those that are completely veg*n, there are no beliefs or cultures that prohibit eating chicken. I forget where I heard that factoid but I’ve always thought it was interesting.

I might have some bad news about Catholics and Fridays during Lent.
posted by box at 6:44 AM on January 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

Is rhubarb a thing Americans share out of cultural upbringing, but no one really likes it enough to bring it overseas?

I grew up in Minnesota and my mom had a bed of rhubarb which grew like great guns, so we had rhubarb pie and jam quite often. I have a taste for it, but my husband, who grew up in Arizona and didn't have it until he was in his 20s finds it really unpalatable.

Growing up in Minnesota and attending a Lutheran church also gave me the opportunity to try lutefisk (which is disgusting and not on either of these lists) and more delicious Nordic treats like lefsa, St. Lucia buns, krumkake, aebleskiver, and rosettes. Also, got me #74 on the Omnivore list - gjetost which is a Norwegian cheese that I did not like, but some of my friends families would feed us as a "treat".

Hot dog from a street cart

The purists around my city insist this is the only way to eat Sonoran hot dogs.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 7:27 AM on January 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

54/54 here. Things like venison, blood pudding and organ meat were more common for me when I was kid not that I really eat or seek them out now. But saying that the list got me thinking about how strange we can be with food. There are few so-called "normal" foods, I'm sure others probably do as well (as this quiz might illustrate), that they wouldn't eat. For me it is coffee, dill and deviled eggs. I've eaten them, so I guess I've tried them at least, but I strongly dislike them. Weird I know. And there are things you eat as part of your cultural food ways that others don't - it blew my mind as a kid when I learned that not all people ate meat pies or used savoury (the summer or winter varietals) in everything. Or that there was such a thing as fake maple syrup and that people prefer it over maple syrup! My partner grew up eating fruit soup (cold because of the Sabbath) and thought everybody ate it.

The conversation around avocados I think is an interesting one. I like avocados fine but I didn't have one until I was a late teenager because they didn't grow in Canada and are perishable so they were not something I ever saw in the 70s or early 80s. Even guacamole was a mystery to me until late adolescence. When I was a kid, living in a remote community, things like clementine oranges were an exotic delicacy. I still remember my dad going south for meetings in November or December and him coming back with a stack of those little wooden orange crates. As kids we'd plough through those before January if not before Christmas. I still remember giving some to the native kids who'd never seen any kind of orange let alone eat one. Game meat and fresh water fish on the other hand we ate all kinds. Fresh milk, fruit and vegetables? Less common unless you grew them yourself or you drove into a larger centre - always frozen or out of can. When I first saw highbush blueberries at a grocery store as a teenager I seriously thought they were some kind of grape because the only ones I ever saw were wild blueberries which are much smaller and actually taste like something. I always thought I hated dates, because the only ones I was ever exposed to were these blocks of mashed together dates that mum would use for our ubiquitous date squares.

Humans are weird.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:42 AM on January 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

48/54.
Was lucky enough to travel for business for several years, so that helped with a lot of the things on the list.

Try it all. More often than not, you'll be glad you did.
posted by prepmonkey at 7:53 AM on January 6, 2020

As it does not contain tete de veau or scrapple this list is incomplete. I have spoken.

A drop of drool runs down my chin as I contemplate the luxuries of veal cheek.
posted by prepmonkey at 7:57 AM on January 6, 2020

Oh and rhubard! Everybody we knew had a least one bunch growing in their gardens. They are easy to grow in colder climates and are not too fussy of a plant so even a terrible gardener can get a plant to produce. A sunny corner and a decent amount of water is all it takes really. So we ate it in all kinds of things - raw dipped in a bit of sugar (even maple sugar) and salt, pies (often with strawberries if we could get them or custard pie), made into a marmalade, stewed and served over custard or ice cream... There's this one recipe we have for rhubarb bread that my great grandmother used to make every spring. I don't have the recipe on hand but it is essentially a very traditional style of banana bread where instead of banana you use rhubarb. It is lightly spiced with cloves, allspice and maybe a bit of cinnamon. I believe rhubarb is technically a vegetable so it can work in savoury applications as well.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:59 AM on January 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

There are few so-called "normal" foods, I'm sure others probably do as well (as this quiz might illustrate), that they wouldn't eat.

Exactly! I got to 85 of the omnivores 100 and of the 12 I haven't tried and probably will never try, several are "normal", like the Krispy Kreme donut. I have tasted a McDonalds Meal, so I counted that as eaten, but I won't ever do it again. Both these nopes are because of texture, shape and size, as much as taste.
The three I would like to try are clam chowder in a sourdough bowl, Poutine and Kobe beef.
posted by mumimor at 8:02 AM on January 6, 2020

And yes, there has been a huge change in availability during my lifetime. My family was very adventurous, so there were quite a few unusual things on our dinner table. For instance my stepfather traveled to China and brought home ingredients. But in general even the simplest things were hard to find. Here, the main change was during the -80's. It started slowly during the 70's and then it took off like a rocket. Is that it the same where you all live?
posted by mumimor at 8:07 AM on January 6, 2020

Avocados are interesting to me too because my parents came from a small village in Mexico that is also the heart of avocado-growing country. Everyone has avocado trees, they are everywhere and it was a daily staple - as in you would have soup, breads and of course avocado. Poor people ate avocados.

So when I see how trendy they have become in the US and Europe and see them as shorthand for hipsterism, it is just disorienting to me. It makes me laugh.
posted by vacapinta at 8:28 AM on January 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

Haggis is just a mildly spiced (white pepper mostly) sausage made from organ meats. And, being from the poorer parts of Scotland, has a tonne of oatmeal filler in it. The strongest taste in it is liver. It's quite inoffensive really.

I like it just fine, but prefer the vastly superior blood pudding, particularly in the more rustic Stornaway style. We even make that ourselves, because it's hard to get commercially here.

Most of the rest of the lists are gated by wealth and access, not by willingness to eat. Many of the things on the Serious Eats lists I've never had either because they're regional (like Krispy Kreme or brunost) or simply crazy expensive to access.

It's the fermented foods I think are the most polarizing to eaters, especially from non-native cultures: cheeses, natto/soy, kimchee/cabbages, pickles of all sorts. Followed closely by dishes with higher levels of spice (and not just capsaicin either), IMO.
posted by bonehead at 9:00 AM on January 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

As an example of access working the other way: pho is comically easy to get in Ottawa now. There's literally a pho shop in every single strip mall, beside the shawarma place. They're replacing the westernized Chinese places that are all closing down. For a lot of Canadians, pho is about as exotic as MacDonalds, and likely a bit cheaper.

The last Krispy Kreme closed down in Canada a dozen years or so ago, however.
posted by bonehead at 9:09 AM on January 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

The last Krispy Kreme closed down in Canada a dozen years or so ago, however.

There's surprisingly a handful still around and you can, if you need to, get some Krispy Kreme doughnuts at some gas stations.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:19 AM on January 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

> Also I would exclude animals not eaten because of religion.
> That's basically all animals.

Excepting those that are completely veg*n, there are no beliefs or cultures that prohibit eating chicken. I forget where I heard that factoid but I’ve always thought it was interesting.

Most Vietnamese and Chinese Buddhists are completely vegetarian.

And while chicken is not specifically prohibited by Buddhism, most Buddhists I know (which is very few) do not eat it.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:23 AM on January 6, 2020

> I might have some bad news about Catholics and Fridays during Lent.

That is not a permanent unilateral taboo on chicken.
posted by ardgedee at 9:32 AM on January 6, 2020

vacapinto, I remember someone from Puerto Rico saying the same thing about avocado toast. It's too hot in PR to keep butter without refrigeration, so buttered toast meant a family with the money (and access to reliable electricity) to have a fridge, while everyone else used avocado on their toast. And that it was so weird to see something they thought of as a food of poverty being used as an example of luxury.

As for changing food trends -- I didn't realize until years later that when my born-in-Las-Cruces mom was feeding us tacos around 1970, it was a bit unusual, until I saw a quote from a 1960s novel where tacos were treated as an exotic treat. Of course, they were still mass market from Old El Paso, as it was all she could get in Arlington, Virginia, but the very idea of mass market Mexican food was brand new. I still remember how delighted she was when La Casita opened in a tiny old house down at Ballston, and she had access to the proper Tex-Mex food of her childhood. A few years later, my father was equally delighted when the first sushi restaurant opened, having gained a taste for it somewhere in his life as a reporter. Vietnamese food followed in Little Saigon, Ethopian restaurants in Adams-Morgan... American food life really started changing in a major way starting in the 1970s and really exploding in the 80s, I'd say.
posted by tavella at 9:43 AM on January 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

Given how many of these things seem ordinary now but wouldn't have in, say, 1990, I wonder what things seem horribly exotic right now that will seem normal in 2050. That is, what thing is my daughter, who is currently one year old, going to make when I visit that I'm going to wrinkle my nose at?
posted by madcaptenor at 10:52 AM on January 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

I remember my mind being blown by the CBC clip where Mrs. Brady explains the concept of pizza.


There's definitely some cultural relativity when someone tries to define what is adventurous or not. Like, whether pho or kimchee is exotic isn't just whether it's 1990 but 1990 in what country?
posted by RobotHero at 11:26 AM on January 6, 2020

Oh, also on the Men In Black commentary track, Tommy Lee Jones felt the need to explain what a perogy is.
posted by RobotHero at 11:34 AM on January 6, 2020

For those that have had both - how would boudin fare against haggis? I'm guessing haggis is less spicy and doesn't have the rice but otherwise it sounds pretty similar flavorwise.
posted by bookwo3107 at 11:45 AM on January 6, 2020

how would boudin fare against haggis?

I assume when you mention rice you mean Cajun boudin blanc? Usually us Northern French Canadians when we say boudin we mean boudin noir or blood sausage and the Europeans have all kinds of things they call boudin. I've had both haggis & Cajun boudin blanc and the main difference in taste, other than general Cajun spiciness, is that haggis is usually made with sheep offal rather than pork. I think sheep has a much stronger flavour then pork which if you're not a regular eater of sheep you may notice or dislike. The haggis I've had was spiced with pepper, coriander and mace which was very different then the Cajun boudin blanc I've had which was much more of a flavour bomb (I don't know if that is typical as I've only had it once). I'm not sure if that helps you? I've been told there are commercial versions of haggis made with pork which seems like a bit of travesty. I've never had that version so I can't compare.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:23 PM on January 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

I did mean Cajun boudin which can sometimes encompass a version of boudin noir as well, but yeah I kind of was just curious about the intensity of the liveriness of Haggis as compared to boudin (which to be fair is hidden under the aforementioned flavor bomb). Sounds different enough to be worth seeking out.
posted by bookwo3107 at 12:31 PM on January 6, 2020

In something of a crossover with the whaling thread, I don't see either dugong or sea turtle in any of these lists.

I wouldn't try them again, and I'll probably not have another opportunity, but it was all lawful.
posted by Acid Communist at 12:38 PM on January 6, 2020

Funny you mention turtle, Acid Communist, while I was walking the dog I remembered that we relatively often had mock turtle soup when I was a kid. I didn't really like it, and it's something I can't imagine many young people would eat today.
It's really complicated to cook, but it was a popular take-out dish, we'd either get it from the supermarket when the adults didn't feel like cooking on weekdays, or from a fancy store if they were entertaining a large group informally. The recipe wasn't exactly like in the wiki I linked to above. It was basically a calf's head soup/stew, and the brain would be rolled into little balls as a garnish along with fish balls and hard-boiled eggs. The adults would pour a generous amount of Madeira into the soup, and when I grew up and could do that, I discovered it vastly improved the whole thing, even thought there was already Madeira in it.
The old days had some weird food.
posted by mumimor at 1:05 PM on January 6, 2020

We also had a big rhubarb patch growing up (NYS). The freezer was always full of rhubarb pie, rhubarb cake, stewed rhubarb, and bags of loose rhubarb chunks. And Mom put it in whatever jam we were short of berries on. Gooseberry-rhubarb jam is amazeballs.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:41 PM on January 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

53/54, only missing frogs legs (I'd be _willing_ to try them, but any time I've seen them on a menu there were other things I wanted to order much more).

natto wasn't on there and that's definitely on a list of adventurous things

Well, it's all relative to culture, right? This list seems pretty banal to many Westerners (As others said, wording indicates this was probably written by a Brit), but there's a bunch of stuff there that is much more uncommon in non-Western cuisine.

Similarly, putting natto on the list for Japan is about the same as the "pickled cucumbers" on a list aimed at Americans/British.
posted by thefoxgod at 3:28 PM on January 6, 2020

I'm gonna put my tinfoil hat on and say this is some sort of data harvesting. Not necessarily spying or tuning marketing algorithms, but... something. I've often heard stuff about buzzfeed quizzes data mining. I just can't quite figure out what you'd do with this data in particular. Oh, and I got 51 out of 54, which must mean I'm a fairly conservative eater.
And I've had hákarl.
posted by svenni at 9:33 PM on January 6, 2020

Buzzfeed-staff-generated quizzes might be data mining, but Buzzfeed also lets casual Buzzfeed users create their own quizzes (or they did for a while). My hunch is actually that this is one of the user-generated quizzes, created by someone with a bit of a conservative palate.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:38 AM on January 7, 2020

In Japan about 50% of people will say they hate natto, so including it doesn't seem too entirely out there.
posted by sotonohito at 4:03 AM on January 7, 2020

Most Vietnamese and Chinese Buddhists are completely vegetarian.

Also a significant percentage of Hindus. Even a few percent of 1.1 Billion people are a lot of religious vegetarians.
posted by Mitheral at 7:09 AM on January 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

Mod note: One comment deleted. White anglo/Americans, please don't describe food that belongs to a culture other than your own in terms of how gross it is, even if you're intending that fondly or in a context of appreciation. Your fellow Mefites have said how that kind of description is hurtful and repeats nasty alienating stuff that's been said to them since childhood; I'm confident you don't intend that impact, so please don't use those descriptions.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:38 AM on January 7, 2020

ardgedee: While some Buddhist traditions do allow chicken, the majority Buddhist interpretation is that one should keep strictly vegetarian. Of course, Buddhism is a little different from many other religions in that, in many traditions, most of its precepts (including dietary ones) are only expected to be followed by monks, not by lay believers.
posted by 256 at 11:45 AM on January 7, 2020

50/50, I have also tried water.
posted by Cosine at 11:57 AM on January 7, 2020

Man, I hate being THAT guy but I can't help myself.... WHY IS THIS LIST SO PEDESTRIAN???

I humbly suggest a slightly more adventurous list.

1. Natto
2. Stinky Tofu
3. Balut
4. Kumis
5. Sweetbreads
6. Horse
7. Steak Tartar
8. Pickled raw rooster combs
9. Kibbeh nayyeh
10. Chapulines

I'm 10/10 here too and don't even consider myself all that adventurous. I think Buzzfeed just pisses me off. It is Monday?

/lawn
posted by Cosine at 12:16 PM on January 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

In Japan about 50% of people will say they hate natto, so including it doesn't seem too entirely out there

But the list is not what foods you like, but what foods youve tried.
The number of Japanese who have literally never tried natto is surely very small, on the order of Americans who have never tried pickled cucumbers.
posted by thefoxgod at 1:08 PM on January 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

A couple years ago, Neven Mrgan made the actually adventurous version of this quiz, with 33 items like surstromming, natto, stink beans, and lutefisk.
posted by waxpancake at 4:27 PM on January 7, 2020

Again, that's not actually adventurous, that's stunt eating. Which can be interesting in its own right, but it's like claiming that people who don't climb mountains can't be outdoorsy.
posted by tavella at 5:02 PM on January 7, 2020

To me stunt eating is more like things almost no one eats regularly (like Fear Factor kind of thing). Not stuff that is super common to eat in one or more countries.

But really, I guess that just means these lists only work if you target them at a specific country, otherwise it gets complicated fast as the majority of things that might be rare or slightly adventurous in one country will be common in others.

[Honestly I don't know enough about all the cuisines of the world to come up with good examples of food not eaten commonly anywhere, although I suspect there are many kinds of insects that would qualify, although other kinds might not]
posted by thefoxgod at 5:15 PM on January 7, 2020

I also don't approach trying new stuff as adventurous eating, because yeah, it gets into stunt eating fast. But I do like to try new things, and my usual metric, what's popular and mainstream in the country/place i'm visiting. That tends to be unusual/uncommon elsewhere. And next thing you know, I score well on Buzzfeed quizzes. But anyway, why not try list popular/emblematic foods worldwide? This whole notion already carries the presumption of the ability to travel, either yourself, or that cuisine.
posted by cendawanita at 6:04 PM on January 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

I've had a surprising number ofwomen in Disney parks forums tell me their school-age kids literally eat nothing but McDonald's-style chicken nuggets ("NOT WHITE MEAT TENDERS, IT *HAS* TO BE THE PRESSED MEAT LIKE MCDONALD'S") so maybe they're skewing the audience.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:23 PM on January 7, 2020

See you tomorrow, saguaro: I am kinda surprised to see polenta on both these lists. It's so common in a bunch of types of food.

That depends entirely on where you are. If you live in the Netherlands, it's trivially easy to never encounter the stuff at all.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:22 AM on January 8, 2020

Buzzfeed and Serious Eats are both American companies, and it looks like the Omnivore list was published on a now defunct UK site so that was the context of my answer. A lot of Americans have eaten grits, which are incredibly similar to polents, which was part of my thinking.

If these articles were published on a site based in the Netherlands, you might have more of a point.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 6:42 AM on January 8, 2020

> how would boudin fare against haggis?

French-style boudain is made with milk and breadcumbs. It's texture is quite different, much silkier, like an emulsified sausage. It's not as fine as bologna or mortadella, but the texture is closer to that than haggis. The Cajun style adds rice as a filler, different again. It's also much more strongly spiced and really isn't much like the others I'll talk about below.

Stornaway, Scots-style, or the Irish style use pinhead oats as a filler, which gets the texture closer.

However, both boudin and puddings are also made in "white" forms, without the use of blood. In their most basic variety, they use lard or suet, but some recipes add organ meats and offal too. So boudin blanc made with liver and offal is getting close to haggis, and white pudding in the Irish style is pretty darn close.

A major difference is casings and their size: haggis is made in a sheep's stomach (or artificial alternative) and anywhere from 8-10 cm across, while most puddings/boudins are made in hog casings, about 3 cm across. Though again, this varies. Some Scots styles of blood puddings use larger casings too. Some dispense with casings all together and cut squares from a baked sheet of sausage. Lots of variety, but the most commonly found will be in the pork casing.

Texture and seasoning depends very much on who makes what. The texture of a white pudding can vary smoothish to quite "rustic". from The seasoning for white pudding tends to be very simple (white pepper and salt), while haggis may be a bit more complex. But again, very much depends on who makes it.

White pudding and haggis are clearly related but fairly distinct. I's say Haggis is generally richer/higher in liver content and more strongly meaty. the white sausage uses pork the haggis strictly sheep, and that does affect flavour too.
posted by bonehead at 7:56 AM on January 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm now wondering if "powdered milk" can be an adventurous food? I grew up on it, but as an adult I've learned many people have never tried it.
posted by RobotHero at 1:29 PM on January 8, 2020

It certainly can be! I never had it until I went on a long trip to Africa. Fresh milk is so affordable and easily available in the Netherlands, most people don't have much reason to use powdered milk.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:28 AM on January 9, 2020

Powdered milk is the secret weapon for the local tarts, so even if it was originally meant as a substitute for fresh milk in the dough, it makes for biscuits that's not too crumbly because the milk wasn't added as a liquid ingredient. it improves on the shelf life too, iirc. #themoreyouknow
posted by cendawanita at 2:10 AM on January 9, 2020 [2 favorites]