From a strictly utilitarian sense, food's job is to get nutrients and calories into your body so that you can convert them into energy and not die.
That's it. There's no contractual obligation that it has to be tasty - and sometimes it's just not.
One Reddit user asked:
What's the absolute worst food you've ever eaten?
... it's pretty safe to say these people won't be coming back for seconds ... except maybe the accidental garlic butter pancake person. Savory pancakes could totally work as long as you're expecting it.
Surprise, It's Savory!
My wife would say...
Pancakes that I accidentally cooked in garlic butter. She hated them.
I liked them.
Savoury pancakes are the norm where I grew up. But we have big thin pancakes (Europe) and I'm not sure cheese, mushrooms and bacon would translate to American pancakes.
That being said, when we do have sweet pancakes it's generally just sugar and lemon juice which wierded the hell out of some friends from Hong Kong.
The Bog Of Eternal Stench
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Years ago Starbucks did a green tea latte. My Mom and I got one to try cause we like green tea.
It was toxic!
We were emitting fumes that should never come out of a human body! We were riding with the windows down in the middle of winter it was so bad!
When I got to a bathroom, when I was done, what I left behind looked like lawn mulching after being out in the rain for a week straight with a smell on par with what I imagine the bog of eternal stench smells like!
As a former Starbucks barista, I can confirm that the green tea latte is so yuck! And it's even worse when you realize that it's doused in so much sugar and STILL tastes like wet grass.
You'd have to REALLY like matcha to like that drink. And even then, it's not even good matcha at all.
Grease Holding Hands
A brand of frozen pizza. It was just grease molecules holding hands.
Yup. The brand I'm thinking of tasted just like grease. I didn't know anything could be that bad.
Pizza is one of the best foods ever. Even when it's bad, it should still be good, or at least edible. They managed to totally f*ck it up.
That pizza tastes like it's topped with failure and grease... so much grease.
Can those grease molecules hold my hand?
- qdust
Curry (?)
Am Indian. Had a curry at someone's house who was not Indian. Straight up did not use any spice but salt. Died on the inside. Ancestors physically manifested to voice disapproval.
Man - don't go to France. 'Curry' or extra-spicy 'picante/mexicaine' flavour is, at best, bland tomato with the merest hint of vinegar, and two molecules of mild chilli. I'm convinced the French are only comfortable with four flavours; buttery, very buttery, cheesey, garlicky (with cheesey and buttery undertones).
- heurrgh
How can it be called curry when it has no spices at all? Here I am laughing picturing diced chicken in basically the water it cooked in and being served as curry.
It Causes Chemical Burns?!
The infamous 삭힌 홍어. Sometimes, when the fermentation is overdone, you can actually get chemical burns in your mouth. But some folks absolutely love it, kinda like marmite.
Many years ago I was reading about non-lethal weapons and one of them was smells that would make people nauseous. And the article was saying they seem to work on most people except Koreans who culturally eat a lot of fermented food.
Not sure what it says about your culture when vomit-inducing smells are met with "mmm tasty!" Weird how flexible the human mind and body is all based on how we are raised. Although Koreans do have a high prevalence of stomach cancer so there are downsides.
- soline
Topped With What?
I attended a wedding of my cousin a few years back. They were part of this cult-like "Christian" sect. The food was not made by a catering company, instead the whole affair was organized by church members.
For dessert they had a mango icebox cake that barely had any cream and was dyed pink for some reason. It had been sitting out for hours under the sun. It was warm and smelled a little funky.
When I got closer I realized it stunk because it was topped with roasted garlic peanuts.
Since whoever made it used it as toppings, I would say either they ran out of/can't find the plain ones and used those instead; or just bought the wrong ingredient.
If I was them I would've just left it out altogether. The garlic taste and smell was overpowering.
We only ate it to be polite and because my siblings and I were daring each other to eat it. My brother managed to eat an entire slice, and yes he's fine. My sister spotted a small sliver of fried garlic in her slice.
It tasted just as bad as it sounds. I almost threw up after taking one bite.
Hot Dog Soup
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Hot dog soup.
My dad was in a rehab/assisted living facility. They served it to them as a meal. It was definitely just leftover hotdogs from the day before that they were trying to use up. It was hot dogs, with chunks, but also with pureed hot dogs for the base.
He had both me and my sister taste it.
We were all super grossed out.
Roasted Eye
Goat eye.
I was an "honored guest" at a Bedouin camp and the chieftain honored me by letting me have one of the eyes of a roast goat as he ate the other eye. It truly is an incredible and rare honor ... but my stomach does somersaults just remembering it...
- Malruhn
I have eaten a pig eyeball from a pig roast. You just leave them in when you roast a whole animal so they're fully cooked, they're tougher than bad calamari on the outside and as soft as cream on the inside.
They don't taste terrible, they have the moisture content of 2 deep fried breaded mushrooms, and that fluid stays just as hot as it does in a breaded mushroom.
It didn't taste bad, it tasted like pork - the texture is something that's hard to get past.
As the guest of honour at a dinner in Hong Kong, I was served up both the 2" eyes of a very large, cooked, cod type fish with about 50 people watching me eat them.
Horrible, fishy, gelatinous balls of foulness!
The Dip Oil Incident
A piece of what would otherwise have been a tasty bit of beef, dipped in way too much numbing oil (think anbesol).
Okay, so. I went to my friend's family's house for Christmas a few years back. They are Chinese, I am not, and they were having hot pot.
My friend was really worried that I wouldn't like it, but I was super excited and was decently sure I'd love it.
Before we sat down to eat, he helped me make a dipping sauce. It was mostly sesame oil, with some soy sauce and a few other things. We mixed them, we sat down, and got ready to eat.
There were a bunch of different meats, and my friend also pointed out the spicy side and the non-spicy side of the hotpot. I decided to start with the beef, as it was most familiar, and the non-spicy broth.
Took a piece, put it in the hot pot, waited until it cooked. Dipped it in my oil dip, and ate it.
Immediately I knew something was wrong. I couldn't feel my mouth.
I was sure I was having an allergic reaction, despite never having had a food allergy to anything before. I started internally freaking out, and basically trying to figure out how I could get away without making a big scene, because it was a lot of people that I did not know and this was also a friend that I had only recently gotten close to.
Also, it's just gross.
Eating meat when you can't taste it or feel your mouth is awful, especially when you aren't expecting it, and think you're probably dying. I also think that the numbing oil has a quite bitter taste (or maybe that's what your taste buds shutting off tastes like?)
After maybe a minute, which felt like an hour, my friend turned to me and mentioned that there must be a lot of numbing oil in the spicy side of the hotpot.
Oh my gosh. Relief. I'm not dying.
His cousin then pointed out that she saw us putting numbing oil (Sichuan peppercorn oil - which is apparently a Chinese culinary thing, though it's supposed to be used sparingly) in our dipping oil rather than the sesame oil.
My friend mixed up the bottles and the cousin didn't tell us because my friend is kind of weird and cousin assumed we just liked it that way.
I had essentially coated a piece of beef in a mixture that was like 90% numbing oil.
Clean Your Pans
Last year I was on my high school's robotics team, and they were hosting a potluck type thing and one of the desserts was a big donut cake. So I think "dang, that looks delicious! I wonder why it's almost entirely untouched?" and I take a bite. What do I taste?
It tastes like onions.
Not kidding.
The person who baked it must've used the same pan they made some savory dish in and never cleaned it. Honestly just the shock of it all pushed it to the top of my disgusting foods list alone. I felt super rude but I ended up just throwing it in a garbage can.
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