When I was in grad school, a friend from Taiwan was joining us on campus for lunch, but he said he'd bring us food from where he lived, in Chinatown. When he arrived with a huge container of tripe in a brown sauce, I opted for white rice.
Over the years, my tastes have grown, and I have been rewarded, but also punished for it. Recently, at a sushi bar, I decided to put my adventurousness to the test. Anyone can order raw fish, but exactly who is ordering the fermented soy that the server warns isn't for everybody? Well, me. And, when the fermented soy sushi arrived, it looked fairly harmless, with its beige suburban bathroom color, but then the stink of it began to hit. Before I could think twice, I popped it in my mouth, and was shocked to discover that, somehow, even though I was trying desperately to swallow, if only to get it out of my mouth, it seemed to be expanding exponentially. A mouthful of Medusa'a squirming snakes writhing and squirming in my mouth, except that they tasted like stinky feet.
Sometimes, dining adventures sneak up on you. After days of lounging by the pools at our hotel, and scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, we decided to visit the world's oldest rainforest. Our tour guide was a cross between Martin Short and Paul Hogan, and had a taste for nature. As we navigated through the fern trees and humid air, it became apparent that our guide was one with the jungle, and his taste for nature was literal. He fed us dry fuzzy orange-colored ornamentation from bushes, and led us up a mountain through a shallow river. I got used to the wet feet, but was a bit thrown by the feeding leeches we discovered when returning to dry land at the top of a waterfall. Is that why I had no appetite for the lunch he had packed? Or was it my dislike of pimento salad sandwiches, which I hid behind a boulder when he wasn't looking? Sure, I ate the ants he forced on us (citrusy), but I had to draw the line somewhere.
Not everyone draws that line, eating pretty much anything put in front of them. Lynn has tried mildly adventurous game. 'I had ostrich in Amsterdam and buffalo in Colorado,' she says. And, it seems that we are all risk-takers when away from home. 'Right about now I'm missing those Dutch holiday oliebollen,' she jokes about the traditional treat that literally means Oil Balls. 'Yes, I've partaken of the oiliebollen,' Lynn admits, about the deep-fried pastries that are taken very seriously by the Dutch, who even hold the annual Nationale Oliebollentest to choose that year's best Oil Balls. 'They're not very exotic, but I love the way the Dutch [have no] fancy name like fritter or beignet.' The golden brown yeasty treats are a New Year's tradition, but the Dutch eat them all through the holidays. Lynn explains that, 'around this time of the year these free-standing concession kiosks pop up in all the downtowns, selling oil balls. They're not my favorite to be honest, because they usually have raisins in them. I don't like raisins in my pastry.' Traditional Oil Balls actually feature currants, a few drops of lemon juice, flour, sugar, and a whole lot of oil. If the term Oil Balls throws you, just call them by their other name. 'The alternate word for them,' says Lynn 'is vetbollen, which means fat ball.' Dig in.
Obviously, what is one person's feast is another person's nightmare. Robbi was having a long, elaborate degustation at Ambria, when she was served squab for her next course. It looked like a smaller version of an already small Cornish game hen, but otherwise appeared tasty, so she picked up her knife and fork, and got to work. After one cut, however, it became apparent that she was going to be unable to eat the very rare squab. 'I think I asked the waiter if they were all that bloody, or how long ago it had died,' she explains. 'It was some rude comment. I'm sure I said I hate things bloody. I do remember using that word, because he was all uppity about it. He said, 'That's how it's served.''
Surely, Robbi wouldn't be the only one put off by rare poultry, but what about the delicacy known as foie gras? Made from the diseased livers of geese who are force fed with tubes that take feed directly to their stomachs, foie gras is an expensive and decadent treat for some and a horror for others. At Everest, another of Chicago's tony dining establishments, Robbi, having not learned her lesson the first time, again ordered the degustation. One of the first courses was a big slice of foie gras with a slightly green aspic border. While the table next to hers ate every rich bite with eyes half closed in satisfied wonder, Robbi managed to force down only a couple of little bites of what she has described as 'greasy' and 'like Crisco.'
When the waiter took away her plate, he asked if everything was OK. She said, 'I'm just saving room for everything else.' That was several years ago. Has she since developed a taste for this high-calorie cholesterol killer? 'I can eat one bite of foie gras before gagging,' she says.
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