Hi Darren,

I agree with you, adapt to what the locals do/eat/say, that is the true essence of travel.

The Strangest thing I have eaten is:

Scorpian - Thailand

Chicken Hearts/Stomaches - Taiwan

Stinky ToFu - Taiwan

I don’t think that I would eat some of the things I tried again, but at least I tried them once

Couldn’t agree more - food and travel go together and they’re both about seeing (tasting) life through a new lens. I firmly believe you’re a “tourist” and don’t become a “traveler” until you eat where the locals eat, hang out where they hang out…

I’m a vegetarian, so I can’t compete with your examples of food weirdness. But because so many people don’t know what to do with vegetarians (especially in the Southern US) I get some strange offers - “So, if you’re a vegetarian, you still eat chicken, right?”

I have to say, I loved the deep fried spinach I was served once. In all honesty you could deep fry a running shoe and it would taste good

Julia Rosien
Editor, http://gogirlfriend.com

Ever had swordfish? It’s delish, the wife and myself had it in Florida

I was 19 when I visited New York for the first time (a huge thing when you consider I was being raised in West Virginia!). I met up with a couple of friends I had become acquainted with at a journalism workshop we all had attended. We wanted to go to Mama Leoni’s, but it was closed, so we crossed the street and headed for this Thai place.

We made the mistake of ordering the “barbeque beef balls.”

They were rubbery, almost like a superball. That’s when my friend Lou leaned over and said “Do you realize what this IS?”

I leaned back and said “I’m so glad we didn’t get the barbeque beef stick!”

Ewww kangaroo’s testicles reminds me of Im a celebrity get me out of here!

I’ve had sea cucumber in Spain - that is probably the weirdest thing. It wasn’t that bad, really. Kind of reminded me of scallops.

Frogs legs are just like eating chicken. In fact there’s alot of food that tastes like it.

Pig’s Testicles - LuZhou, China
Guinea Pig - Peru

The Testicles were rubbery and nasty, the guinea pig was deep fried and yummy!

Caceda, (like a cockroach), Lishui, China
Pig brain, Chengdu, China
Duck tongue, somewhere else in China
Dog (by accident, I only spoke broken Chinese then…and was told it was “like steak”, because they knew I understood those words. I only found out the next day from my Chinese teacher what I truly had eaten).

Caceda isn’t bad and it’s pretty meaty, the gross part is just the mental bit. Pig brain…I was wasted, so it tasted pretty good (ditto on numerous other brain items and alcohol). Duck tongue, gotten used to that living in China for so long. It’s pretty good. Cow intestine isn’t bad if it’s BBQed either, sea cucumber rocks if you get used to the idea.

Dog was like a cross between venison and beef. Slightly gamey tasting but similar to beef in texture. Something I will never do again now that I speak Mandarin and find the idea repulsive, but it makes for a good story now.

As for the testicles…I don’t think that’s a threshold I’m ready to cross…unless of course someone tricked me.

Hi Darren,

Scorpion tastes very earthy. Fortunatly for me, I had some BBQ sauce to go with it.

My wife & I were in Budapest in about 1991. I’m monolingual English, but can **sort of** fumble my way about in German, French, Spanish & Italian, but the Cyrillic (sp?) alphabet really threw me. We ended up at a local fast food chain called “City Grill”. Now, the biggest advantage of fast food chains is that they have PICTURES of the food. Well, City Grill had a poster just beside the sunny window of a burgerish looking thing, but orangey coloured, on a yellowish bun. I assumed it was sun-faded, but what the heck… When it came it was indeed orangey, and the bun was yellow tinged. Tasted pretty good, though. To this day I don’t know / don’t really want to know what the meat was…

Pig and beef testicles I eat at home regularly, also pig brain ( I live in Romania ), so these are not something exotic to me.
But in China I ate scorpion and also a very big cockaroach , maybe the Caceda that Stephen is talking about.It`s the size of a small potato, very thick and a lot of meat on it.I served them both at food stalls in Beijing.

[...] know many of you will agree with me that visiting any of the global fast food franchises is not something you want to do too often while travelling – checking out the local [...]