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T H I S+W E E K > Mondo Weirdo:
Praise the Titanic!
Above the volcano
D E P A R T M E N T S The Surreal Gourmet
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Readers' Tips and Tales
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Tuesday, May 20 If it's Tuesday, A full list of all
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strange foods BY DON GEORGE | as Douglas Cruickshank's story this week on the annual Titanic convention attests, the world is full of wacky things. Wanderlusters know this well, of course: In our wanderings, we inevitably come across mind-boggling rituals, festivals, beliefs and everyday practices that are considered absolutely normal in their native lands. Such discoveries are among the prime revelations and riches of travel, and in celebration of this truth, my column this week is inaugurating a new weekly Wanderlust offering: Mondo Weirdo. Mondo Weirdo? If you're old enough to remember that film "Mondo Cane," you'll understand the name; and if you're not old enough to remember that film, well, you already know how Mondo Weirdo the world is, anyway. Each week Mondo Weirdo will present some little tidbit that illustrates our collective worldwide wackiness. And we're counting on you -- oh, worldly reader -- to contribute your favorite examples from the far corners of the globe. What's the weirdest thing you've come across on the road? Let us know! Send your story to wanderlust@salonmagazine.com and put Mondo Weirdo in the subject area. We'll read them all, and each week we'll share a tale or two. Now, to kick this party off, I thought I'd share some prime examples I recently discovered in the newsletter of Geographic Expeditions, an adventure travel company headquartered in San Francisco. Staff members at the company, who routinely roam the planet's less-traveled paths, were asked to recall their strangest food experiences on the road Here's a selection of their responses. Bon appetit! TOM COLE: As the leader of the first group to cross the Turugart Pass between Kyrgyzstan and China, I was served a sheep's head at a banquet held in our honor in a yurt in Narayn, just north of the pass. Parts of the jowl were excellent, although I disappointed our Kyrgyz hosts by passing up the eyeballs. BRENT OLSON: In Bhutan, sautéed orchids are a great delicacy. Gathered from the forests just before they bloom, they are sautéed with onions and have a slightly bitter taste. SARAH TIMEWELL: Roasted walrus, served at an annual Chukchi festival in the Russian Far East. The Chukchi are allowed to take one or two of the great beasts a year, and we arrived just in time. JIM SANO: The Andean delicacy called cuy is essentially a small beast roasted whole -- head, hair, teeth and everything -- on your plate. It tastes a little like chicken in a spicy sauce. The day after my first encounter, I was wandering around a local market and found a stall of cute live guinea pigs -- cuy! ANN AYLWIN: So uninteresting that they're morbidly fascinating: the boxes of 10 dry cookies and a key chain, which are the sum total of meal service on flights within China. BOB JONES: In my many years in Taiwan and China, the one dish that took eons to get used to was chou doufu -- stinky tofu, a fermented bean curd which gave every indication of having been brewed in a sewer. It turned out quite tasty, once you doused it in oyster sauce and succeeded in getting it past your nose. And last but certainly not least: AL READ: Years ago in a remote jungle village in southern China, I was the honored guest at a banquet in which the highlight was a dish called "Just-Born Mice." Heavily fortified by potent local spirits, I was able to pop a few squirming mice fetuses onto the grill and into my mouth before moving on to more familiar fare. Yow! I haven't come across anything as stomach-churning as Just-Born Mice in my travels, but I still give a little involuntary shudder when I think of one feast I had in Japan: I had ventured way off the beaten track, into a weather-beaten fishing village on a foggy spit of land that slides into the Japan Sea. Because I spoke Japanese and was the first foreigner that had passed that way in decades, I became the town's guest of honor, and I was taken with great ceremony to what I gathered was the local equivalent of Chez Panisse. I was feted with the usual bottomless cups of sake and glasses of beer, and the endless succession of little indescribable things artfully arranged on thimble-sized plates. Then, for a moment, the whole restaurant seemed to pause as a dish was carried regally to the table and set before me. It was a whole fish, arranged with its head and tail twisted to look as if it were still leaping. Its flank had been cut open to reveal thin-cut slices of glisteningly fresh flesh. What about you? Have you a strange food story, or some other tale of worldwide wackiness? Send it to wanderlust@salonmagazine.com. We'll be waiting! And don't forget to check out our food discussion in Table Talk. - - - - - - - - - - - - Don George is the
Editor of Wanderlust. You can e-mail him at dgeorge@salonmagazine.com.
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Salon Wanderlust is published every Monday evening at 6 p.m. PDT in Salon. Send all reader mail to wanderlust@salonmagazine.com. To receive a colorful weekly update on what's happening in Wanderlust, sign up here. Published articles are housed in the Wanderlust archives.
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All eyes were on me as I picked up my chopsticks and brought them to the
fish. I reached in to pick up the most savory-looking slice -- and the fish
jumped. Thinking this was some bizarre reflex reaction, I reached in
again. Again the fish jumped. This was when I looked at the fish's eye -- and
realized that it was still alive! This was the village's delicacy -- the
rawest raw fish in all Japan.
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