My mother ate borscht, a Russian beet soup, almost every day of my childhood, and while she was boiling it, the smell of beets revolted me so much that I would up and leave the house. Oddly enough, I have come to like borscht as an adult, when there is enough sour cream. Genetics can be a powerful force.
The point is that we all have foods we dislike, though thankfully, since I work as a restaurant critic, my list of them is quite short. (Worst thing I've ever put in my mouth: fermented sea slug, at the Truk Lagoon in Micronesia.) There are many foods almost universally disliked by Americans, though; funky organ meats, slippery textured vegetables, ripe, smelly cheeses, insects of any kind, almost any blood other than beef blood, not to mention tofu, Brussels sprouts or sardines.
So here, in no special order, are 10 foods we just dare you to eat.
Kimchi, as it appears most commonly in this country, is stinky Korean fermented cabbage, served as a side dish (pan'chan) at your local Korean barbecue joint.
In Korea, though, kimchi isn't merely cabbage, but often sliced radish, or the outer leaves of pumpkin or lettuce. They are prepared by kim jang, an involved process that occurs only in winter. The vegetable of choice is pickled in salty fish juice and powdered red pepper. Then it is allowed to ferment, often in a large earthenware crock. Any of our local Korean barbecue joints like Jong Ga, 953 E. Sahara Avenue, offers the condiment. Asian markets sell a variety of kimchi in jars, the same way American markets sell pickles.
Durian, proclaimed by some as the "king of fruits," is a spiky green fruit common to southeast Asia. It can weigh up to 8 pounds and is so important, it has its own web page. People have actually been killed by falling durian, so beware.
Writer Anthony Burgess described the durian's famous scent as a raspberry blancmange eaten in a sewer. A more common view was voiced by a Weekly staffer: "It smells like dog shit." Still, it is the most prized, expensive fruit from Asia, and when cracked open, seeds with pale yellow, fleshy coverings are revealed, tasting suspiciously like pineapple ice cream. Buy one at 99 Ranch Market, in Chinatown Plaza Mall, fresh in season (March-May), or frozen out of season. Try a slice for dessert, on top of sticky rice doused in coconut cream.
The dreaded tripe soup known as menudo is used primarily as a hangover remedy by Mexicans, and is usually available only on weekends, at places like Taqueria Titas, 4440 E. Washington Boulevard. It's a rich, beefy broth filled with long, slithery lengths of cow's intestine, a foodstuff that smells a bit like your local abbatoir, and possibly worse when improperly scraped. Mexicans like to eat menudo with warm corn tortillas, and heaps of chopped onion and cilantro, but the soup is also good with an ice cold Dos Equis, the stalwart's choice.
Haggis is the national dish of Scotland, in spite of horrifying most Scottish people. It's sheep's stomach stuffed with a mixture of oats and organ meats, with cayenne pepper, salt and lamb broth added to liven things up. Sprinkled with Tobasco, and washed down with an 18-year old Macallan, it isn't half bad.
It's not available in our restaurants at the moment, but you can buy some in a can, or frozen, at British Foods, 3375 S. Decatur Boulevard. The first two ingredients listed on the canned haggis are lamb hearts and oats, but in Scotland, it is usually made with plenty of kidney and lung, too. Was "Campbell's, it's mmm-good" a slogan for haggis before the Campbell clan came to the New World? Only Mel Gibson knows for sure.
Tofu is hated and feared enough on its own, but let it ferment, become slimy and acquire the smell of a sachet filled with limburger, and it becomes a food few of us could love. But consider this: A Chinese foodie I know refers to cheese as "the fermented mammary secretions of a beast," and in that context, maybe stinky tofu—jou dofu as it is called in Mandarin—doesn't seem so extreme. The only place I know of to eat it here is at the New Shanghai Restaurant in the Chinatown Plaza Mall, but many Asian markets, like the 99 Ranch downstairs in the mall, carry it, too.
"That's gross" is the response I expect from a non-Jewish person or non-Mexican whenever I express my affection for a tongue sandwich. In a Mexican restaurant, you often find tongue, lengua in Spanish, filling a taco. A number of authentic Jewish delis serve beef tongue, although Canter's, at the TI, recently stopped doing so. (You still get a nice tongue sandwich at the original Canter's, in LA.) So for now, you'd better eat yours at Samuel's, 2744 N. Green Valley Parkway, Henderson. Try one hot, on a little rye bread with mustard. You'll enjoy.
Sushi has become so firmly entrenched a part of the American dining idiom that by now, even 7-year olds can routinely rattle off the Japanese names for fish of choice. Sea urchin is uni, a spiny, round creature with an Agent-Orange colored hunk of flesh inside. It's bad enough that the texture is that of creamy liver; taste-wise, it will remind you of a combination of sea water and the tincture of iodine that your grandmother assaulted you with that summer you scraped your knee on the family dock. Sushi King, inside the Stardust, is a good place to eat some.
Sesos are calf's brains, a filling for tacos at Tacos Mexico, 3820 W. Sahara Avenue, and all the other authentic taco joints anywhere north of Washington. Perhaps it is cavalier to order sesos in these days of la vaca loca (mad cow disease), but if the FDA isn't worrying, why should we? Sesos are soft, yielding, flavorful and protein-rich. Cover them with a little chili sauce and hey, you can't tell that you are eating brains. Other cuisines prize them too, such as Hungarian, Moroccan and, naturally, the French, who eat them with scrambled eggs.
It's hard enough getting Americans to eat steak tartare—chopped raw sirloin with capers, onions and egg—but ethnicize the dish by adding the hot spice paste called berbere, a specialty of Ethiopia, and the task becomes practically impossible. At Ghion Ethiopian Restaurant, 3400 S. Jones Boulevard, the berbere is fiery hot, a result of bird's eye chilies, bishop's weed and other spices mixed in, the perfect foil for the kitfo. Along with the spicy raw beef you get injera, a spongy millet-flour bread, to tear apart and scoop it up.
I was scared stiff of the Big Mac before I saw Morgan Spurlock's film, Super Size Me. But after seeing Wisconsin's Jim Gorske gobble down Big Mac number 19,000, my fears have been assuaged. After all, the guy is a lot skinnier than me. Dietfacts.com has the following nutritional information about Big Mac: 510 calories, 26 grams of fat (about 40 percent of the recommended daily amount) and 930 grams of sodium (39 percent). All in all, these numbers don't seem so bad, but as far as I'm concerned, give me the other nine in this list before this tasteless, protoplasmic, aesthetically barren creation, which runs well behind the Whopper, In-N-Out Burger, Fatburger or any other major burger chain burger.
Of course, as with brain tacos, haggis in a can and even fermented sea slug, it's best to judge for yourself.