Americans Try Bizarre European Foods

When I travel, I try to keep a “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” mentality when it comes to food. After all, why go all the way to a new place if you’re just going to eat all of the same stuff you eat at home? I’ll admit, however, that there are certain foods that I simply cannot handle—foods whose flavors, smells, and textures are so strange to my palate that my brain sort of short-circuits and fails to recognize them as edible. This video from BuzzFeed of Americans eating bizarre European foods for the first time perfectly captures that moment when you’re trying to be game about tasting something new, but your brain is crying, “WHAT IS THIS?”

The people in the video try a variety of European delicacies, including escargot (snails cooked with garlic butter; France), black pudding (sausage made of congealed pig’s blood; England and Ireland), and haggis (pudding made of minced sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs; Scotland). The tasters have a variety of responses to these dishes. In some cases, they seem more put off by the idea of a food than its actual taste. For example, one woman exclaims after eating escargot (snails) for the first time, “I like it! I weirdly like it!” Upon trying black pudding (blood sausage), another taster remarks, “I’m grossed out in theory, but every time I eat it, it’s so good.” However, there’s one food that they all seem to agree is overwhelmingly awful:

Lutefisk

Lutefisk is a white fish that has been dried and treated with lye. That’s right, lye, which is also used in industrial cleaners and drain de-cloggers. When the fish is reconstituted to be eaten, it has a gelatinous texture. It’s a traditional dish in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and all of the BuzzFeed tasters absolutely hate it.

They dislike its slimy texture:

They hate its smell:

This guy sums up the general feeling:

Watch the whole video:

Images: YouTube (5)