Jack
Brenton
AshishWorld's Scariest Foods
November 27th 2009 11:53
Kopi Luwak
What it is: The world's most expensive coffee. Main ingredient: weasel poop
Where it's served: Japan, the United States, and southeast Asia
Haggis
What it is: Sheep heart, lungs, and liver, seasoned and encased in sheep stomach, then boiled
Where it's served: Scotland…and at annual Robert Burns parties everywhere on January 25, once everybody's had enough Scotch
As Burns wrote in his 1786 poem "Address to a Haggis," "Old Scotland wants no watery ware that slops in bowls …Give us a haggis!" One wonders, however, whether the venerable bard ever actually consumed haggis while not ragingly drunk. Watery? Check, thanks to the preparation method of boiling for three hours. Sloppy? Double-check. When sliced open, a cooked haggis spills forth its (literal) guts in what can be an alarmingly gloppy fashion—an effect Burns himself describes memorably in the same poem: "His knife sees rustic Labour sharpen, and cut you up with practiced skill, trenching your gushing entrails bright." If gushing entrails in a bowl are your pleasure, you're in good company, at least as far as Mr. Burns and his fellow Scotsmen are concerned.
Tarantula
What it is: Whole, palm-sized spiders, stir-fried with spice
Where it's served: Cambodia
When something is described as crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside, generally speaking, you really, really want cheese to be involved. But tarantula aficionados, of which there are many, swear that the texture of a deep-fried tarantula is its most mouthwatering characteristic. The legs, like furry potato chips, are pleasingly crisp and tend to absorb whatever seasonings go into the pan with the spider. Bite into the body, and your succulent reward is a mouthful of something not unlike a hot fish eyeball. While the tarantula started its culinary history as survival food (each spider contains a fair amount of protein), tarantulas are now sold as much for shock value as for nutritional value, offered up by the heap on platters to tourists to eat on a dare.
Fugu
What it is: A type of puffer fish poisonous enough to cause violent, swift death
Where it's served: Japan
Fugu is so dangerous that chefs who prepare it in restaurants must be specially trained, licensed, and certified. There are no prerequisites, however, for eating the stuff, and some diners pay in the range of $400 for a four-course meal of fugu. Fugu's cachet in Japan is a little difficult to understand, considering that a) it can kill you so effectively you almost think it wants to kill you, and b) it tastes exactly like rubber bands. Fugu is only available from October through March, and the classic fugu presentation is fugu-sashi, in which the wildly poisonous flesh is sliced paper-thin and arranged in the shape of a chrysanthemum, with grated radish and sauce for dipping. When radish is the least horrible thing on your plate, you know you ordered the wrong thing.
Rocky Mountain Oysters
What it is: Bull testicles
Where it's served: Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana
Late summer is, apparently, the harvest season for bull testicles: You can get a freshly reaped and deep-fried pair (or quartet) at the annual Testicle Festival (or Testy Festy) in Clinton, Montana, typically held the first weekend of August. As in the rest of Montana, at the Testy Festy, only the strong survive: Besides the obligatory Rocky Mountain oyster eating contest, there's bullcrap bingo (involving a large bingo board where the recently fed cattle roam), a greased pig–wrestling competition, and multiple wet T-shirt contests. At a three-ring biker circus like this, the oysters themselves are almost an afterthought—an afterthought that tastes like chicken…with veins.
*Pictures and information sourced from concierge.com here.
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