eating weird stuff

[Ken Gargett]

many years ago, i had an argument with a restaurant owner in saigon. i was there to do an aussie food and wine presentation with a great mate of mine who was a chef. i had been very keen to go to a little place we heard about that served weird stuff. i wanted to try snake. unfortunately, the day we planned lunch there, the chef was unwell - massively hungover - as we had doscovered a bar called the gecko which was the hangout for the local french rugby team and we just happened to step through the doors the evening they were celebrating a big win. we ended up drinking these fantastic Baileys cocktails till about 5am and as we were leaving, i asked the bartender if i could have the recipe for the Baileys cocktails. he asked what was i talking about.

turns out they were not Baileys cocktails at all but rather vietnamese homemade chocolate vodka. christ we were sick. 

but i was determined to go (the chef apparently could not get out of bed till service that evening - in fairness, after this lunch i went back to the hotel and missed the evening service). 

ordered the snake (the place looked like a small zoo including some things i was horrified to see). at this stage, i was the only customer. the dishes were apparently small and she said i should try something else as well. so i ordered the 'bat and green beans'. no, she said. i assumed this was a cultural thing and that the tourist would not handle the bat. so we argued. i insisted that i wanted to try the bat and green beans and she kept refusing. eventually i asked why can't i have the bat!

she looked at me and said that i was fine to have the bat. it is the green beans you will not like. so i had sauteed bat. honestly, you'd need 50 of them for a meal, even if on a strict diet. 

at one stage, the waiter was bored so he took out a cobra and annoyed it. i nearly went over the wall. but he had obviously done it before and knew to stay out of the way. 

then a young guy from taiwan came in and ordered something. nice guy. insisted i come over and try what he was having. had a spoonful. it was feral and greasy and not at all nice. turned out to be bear paw. i really could have ripped his head off for that but he was a nice guy and obviously thought he was doing the right thing by sharing. some of these poor bears were in small cages near the tables. the woman would carry around a beautiful gibbon and i asked her if it was a pet, the way she cuddled it and the way it hung on to her. no, she said, you want to eat it. no, i did not. 

anyway, this was all leading to this. tarantula burgers. line up! 

 

Tarantula Burgers Exist if You Want to Eat Your Nightmares

Photo by AFP PHOTO/Yuri CORTEZ via Getty Images

They cost $30 and you have to win a raffle to eat one

MIKE POMRANZ 

April 13, 2018

Just because you can make something into a burger doesn’t mean you necessarily want to make something a burger. A North Carolina restaurant is currently proving that point this month… with a tarantula burger.

For all of April, Durham’s Bull City Burger and Brewery is holding its sixth annual Exotic Meat Month. The options are a bit of a laundry list: Alligator, reindeer, crickets, camel, rabbit, python, elk and turtle have all been mentioned on social media so far. But the most talked about exotic meat is also the most terrifying: a large hairy, eight-legged zebra tarantula.

Now, to be fair, the entire burger isn’t tarantula, meaning this isn’t a patty of ground up tarantula meat. Instead, the $30 burger starts quite normal: a 100 percent North Carolina pasture-raised beef patty topped with gruyere cheese and spicy chili sauce served on a fresh-house baked bun. But added to the mix is a “lightly salted and oven-baked” tarantula sitting between beef and bun. Otherwise, the arachnid is unadulterated and looks very tarantula-like. If you don’t like spiders, this is your nightmare burger.

View image on Twitter

Bull City Burger@BullCityBurger

 

 

Martha did it yesterday, Randall did it today, and now it's David D's turn to give it a shot!

David D. ticket # 907656 give us a call and claim your tarantula burger.

7:16 AM - Apr 7, 2018

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But though the experience may be off-putting to many, it’s popular enough that Bull City had to create a raffle to determine who will be served one of the 18 tarantulas that are available for customers. Called the “Tarantula Challenge,” interested parties have to go to the restaurant to sign up and then check the web to see if their name and number has been drawn. After that, “you have 2 days to call the restaurant,” Bull City states, and “arrange a date within 7 days of calling that you will return to the restaurant to purchase the exclusive Tarantula Burger.” But that’s not all! “If you are able to eat the entire burger you will receive one of our limited edition Tarantula Challenge t-shirts (sizes are limited) and get your picture taken for social media fame and glory.”

That’s all fine and good, but how does it taste? “People say it tastes most like crab, or other shellfish, sometimes with a bit of a metallic-y taste,” Bull City wrote on Twitter. “BUT, the legs, the body...each bite tastes a bit different. Best way to answer that question? Try one for yourself!” Uh… Maybe?

[madandana]

I am usually the one eating things my friends won't. Being from MN even Oysters and crawdads are taboo to most. I also like Rocky Mountain Oysters.

Still the  most disturbing thing I've seen is when Rob ate that baby duck still in the egg.  Probably not to my liking ?

[MIKA27]

3 hours ago, madandana said:

Still the  most disturbing thing I've seen is when Rob ate that baby duck still in the egg.  Probably not to my liking ?

....The French    

I for one would try almost anything once, Tarantula in a burger is not appealing BUT, possibly if I were there at the moment etc, I might give it a go. Kinda like a soft shell crab in a burger. I've tried that and it was amazing.

[cfc1016]

I wouldn't mind eating tarantula burger.

It seems most arthropods are actually pretty sweet/sour. Lacking a true vascular system, their bodily fluids are usually a mixture heavy in formic acid. This is very similar to citric acid, so they often taste like some sort of crunchy fruit.

Bugs are good.

@Ken Gargett @El Presidente

Don't they call it outback lemonade, when you mash up and boil a bunch of ants? The acid tastes like lemons, apparently.

[mbflash80]

Had grasshoppers last weekend at a Mariners game...not my thing...at all

[Lotusguy]

Ate seahorse yesterday in a soup. It was a customer dinner so it would have been too impolite to take a picture. Much like bugs, it was mostly crunchy with no real discernible flavors. I’ve eaten pretty much everything in my many years of Asia travel.

The worst, by far, was live chopped up octopus in Korea. The live baby octopus in Japan wasn’t as bad.

Balut (the duck embryo mentioned above) was nasty. I wasn’t a big fan of chicken sashimi either.

Honorable mention: sandworm jelly in Fuzhou. Apparently, when in distress, these aquatic worms secret something that turns into jelly. I have a problem with jelly texture in general, so throw in some chunks of worms and salty/fishy taste and I had to seriously fight the gag reflex.

On the other hand, the silkworm chrysalis from Dalian province we’re awesome.

Fun times!

[cfc1016]

I had fried cicadas in 2004. They were delicious. 

As much as i loved my pet octopus, I’m not sentimental toward cephalods on the whole. I love eating octopus and squid. I had, for the first time, octopus ceviche a couple years ago. It was sublime. I’m a sucker for some ceviche, though. 

[Ken Gargett]

2 hours ago, Lotusguy said:

Ate seahorse yesterday in a soup. It was a customer dinner so it would have been too impolite to take a picture. Much like bugs, it was mostly crunchy with no real discernible flavors. I’ve eaten pretty much everything in my many years of Asia travel.

The worst, by far, was live chopped up octopus in Korea. The live baby octopus in Japan wasn’t as bad.

Balut (the duck embryo mentioned above) was nasty. I wasn’t a big fan of chicken sashimi either.

Honorable mention: sandworm jelly in Fuzhou. Apparently, when in distress, these aquatic worms secret something that turns into jelly. I have a problem with jelly texture in general, so throw in some chunks of worms and salty/fishy taste and I had to seriously fight the gag reflex.

On the other hand, the silkworm chrysalis from Dalian province we’re awesome.

Fun times!

a lot of those sound worth a shot!

but i have to ask - how on earth can a chopped up octopus be alive? wouldn't that very act preclude that? 

[Lotusguy]

a lot of those sound worth a shot!
but i have to ask - how on earth can a chopped up octopus be alive? wouldn't that very act preclude that? 

By alive, I meant still moving and sucking to my teeth, et cetera. It was close enough to “alive” for me The famous Chinese drunken shrimp got nothing on that.

[JoeyGunz]

I ate a bbq tarantula in Phnom Penh,Cambodia overlooking the lakes from our guesthouse floating patio, it was fine, good texture, great flavour, all until the body bursts and fill's your mouth with a creme like substance.

 

You live and you learn, or at least you hope you do.

[BrightonCorgi]

In the States, horse is taboo, but I like it a lot.  Very common in parts of Europe.  I like pig ears and those super small dried snack fish from Asia; not sure what they are called.

[cfc1016]

2 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

In the States, horse is taboo, but I like it a lot.  Very common in parts of Europe.  I like pig ears 

Are you a LITERAL corgi? ?

I love this

[cfc1016]

9 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

a lot of those sound worth a shot!

but i have to ask - how on earth can a chopped up octopus be alive? wouldn't that very act preclude that? 

Each of an octopus’ arms has an independent central nerve cluster (effectively 8 extra brains). Those nerves will continue to fire for a while after ‘brain death’. 

[El Hoze]

Fried grasshoppers, or chapulines, are pretty awesome. They are salty and crunchy, nothing gross at all in my view. If you eat them with guacamole and a soft tortilla the salt and crunchy texture really works well. 

[Ken Gargett]

4 hours ago, cfc1016 said:

Each of an octopus’ arms has an independent central nerve cluster (effectively 8 extra brains). Those nerves will continue to fire for a while after ‘brain death’. 

good point, though it might depend on just how chopped up it was. 

[jerrybrowne]

 

Had these in Shanghaii. Pretty good except the grasshoppers. Don’t think I could do the tarantula burger.....

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[cfc1016]

11 minutes ago, Ken Gargett said:

good point, though it might depend on just how chopped up it was. 

https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-sodium-chloride-tXdFbvonqo9uo

this is what happens when you pour soy sauce on a dead octopus 

[Ken Gargett]

2 minutes ago, cfc1016 said:

https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-sodium-chloride-tXdFbvonqo9uo

this is what happens when you pour soy sauce on a dead octopus 

that is seriously cool! 

[cfc1016]

3 minutes ago, Ken Gargett said:

that is seriously cool! 

Sorta makes ya hungry for octopus, right?!?

[targa88]

There was a video of folks eating live baby rats... yuck

[jerrybrowne]

Sorta makes ya hungry for octopus, right?!?

Ummm, not any longer..... ;-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[MIKA27]

9 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

In the States, horse is taboo, but I like it a lot.  Very common in parts of Europe.  I like pig ears and those super small dried snack fish from Asia; not sure what they are called.

In Hungary a while back when I lived there, horse meat and sausage was a favorite of mine. Super sweet a smoky. Damn I miss it!

[MIKA27]

1 hour ago, targa88 said:

There was a video of folks eating live baby rats... yuck

Yeah... That's pretty damn gross. 

[Lotusguy]

Yeah... That's pretty damn gross. 

Ok, not doing THAT.

Bat was pretty lame - all skin and bones.

[Fuzz]

6 hours ago, jerrybrowne said:

 

Had these in Shanghaii. Pretty good except the grasshoppers. Don’t think I could do the tarantula burger.....

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

Good lord! What is that horrible white stuff?!?!