What's the wildest thing you've ever eaten?

I think about food all the time, can you tell?

I wonder what makes eating a certain thing a wild and daring endeavor. You could argue it's fear of the unknown and unusual with mysterious consequences. This would make something like chicken feet exciting to you (note it's to you; chicken feet are normal to me). But what makes chicken feet exciting but moldy bread disgusting?

My pal A said the wildest thing he's ever eaten was a durian milkshake. It more or less tasted like a vanilla milkshake but with a strong aftertaste that pretty much only comes from durian. The durian taste and stigma made the drink exciting. It was okay, but probably not something he would order every time.

My pal M (not to be confused with me) said the wildest thing she's ever eaten is Korean-style marinated crab. That's the dish where you take a whole, live (I think) crab, douse it in spicy sauce, and eat it raw. Let's face it; what made this dish exciting was the prospect of eating raw crab. She didn't like it. Apparently the dish was too spicy for her taste and the crab meat was the consistency of jelly, which is a desirable feature of jelly but not crab. However, this dish is intriguing in that, to a casual observer, it is clearly the child of necessity. You can imagine a hungry fisherman in his boat in the middle of the sea, unable to build a fire, with only a jar of sauce remaining in his provisions, surrounded only by his catch and icy grey seawater.

As for me, I consider things like chicken feet, fried pig intestines, and fish intestines in egg to be normal fare. These aren't everyday dishes, mind you, since the pig intestines are definitely high in cholesterol. Oddly enough, the wildest thing I've ever eaten was a salty yogurt drink. My pal K and I once ate at a kebab restaurant and decided to try the bottled yogurt drinks in the refrigerated case. These drinks are basically thinned plain yogurt with a lot of salt. I do mean a lot. Something like 2000+ milligrams per serving. What made this wild was the sensation of drinking something made of ordinary ingredients (albeit ones I don't normally eat a lot of) in a combination I'd never tried before. The drink itself was intensely tangy and salty. I could feel my blood pressure skyrocket after the first sip.

Stereotyping.

Warning: the following contains many sweeping assumptions. Please do not think any less of me because of them. Also, I am referring to restaurants in the United States only.

For as long as I can remember, I have judged the authenticity of an ethnic restaurant by the percentage of patrons of that particular ethnicity. You can call it racism. You can call it ignorance. You can call it stereotyping. I just figure that, assuming there are many options in the area, and assuming a moderate price range, authenticity is a major factor in choosing a restaurant. Do the places I go to serve authentic food? Sure, it may taste good to me, but I've long suspected that I have rather conservative and wimpy tastes.

All of the Chinese restaurants I normally go to are filled with Chinese people. The food is authentic, and I know this because I've had good teachers. I have eaten at P.F. Chang's, and I can safely say that the food there is not authentic. I was also very glad someone else paid for the meal, because I disliked it very much. P.F. Chang's was not filled with Chinese people during my visit.

Nearly every Japanese restaurant I go to is not filled with Japanese people. The exception is Tobie Tyler's. Based on the assumptions made in the first paragraph, I believe that stir-fried seaweed-topped spaghetti, mild curries, yosenabe (sp?), and the occasional platter of sashimi are Japanese comfort foods. I like them all. Caterpillar rolls, although delicious, are not authentic. But I like caterpillar rolls too, so my tastes really run toward corrupted versions of Japanese cuisine.

Every American restaurant I have been to was filled with Americans, because American is not a race. So there. I would like to visit the First Nations restaurant in Vancouver, which I guess makes American a race, but it's referred to as First Nation. It's 1:00 AM so I won't try to resolve this now.

I have never been to an Italian restaurant filled with Italian people. However, I believe this is because these weren't really Italian restaurants, they were truly Italian-American restaurants.

I have never been to a Thai place that had Thai people eating there, but then, I hardly have the pleasure of meeting many Thai people to begin with, so I assume this has more to do with statistics than authenticity. Needless to say, I'm pretty sure I've never had authentic Thai food.

Every Korean and Indian restaurant I have been to had plently of Korean and Indian people, respectively, patronizing the establishment. This is where I think my assumptions begin to break down. I cannot eat very spicy food, and yet I could eat the food at these places. I can't possibly have chosen authentic restaurants every time, right? Didn't these places adapt their cuisine, "dumb down" the spice level if you will, to please my corrupted palate?

And now that you've read this, you must think I'm a horrible bigot.

I watch way too much TV.

What does it mean when I find myself enthralled by "ICC Cricket World"? It's marvelously fast-paced and has dizzying camera shots. I think it's in English, but I barely understand what's going on. It makes me wish they'd show cricket on ESPN2 once in a while, but not at the expense of my beloved sumo wrestlers.

Why I watch cartoons.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html/?nav=pq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/03/AR2005050301281.html
Just the tip of the iceberg, from columnists I like to read on a regular basis. And that's just the print media. What's on TV is a totally different story because on those channels, there's no food section to break up the coverage. Just a continuous string of non-stories. I learn more from the ads on Nickelodeon than I do from any of the news networks. The cartoons are laden with messages about sharing and so forth. We get none of that from the news.

So please, please, please make it stop. Give me CNN International.