What's the most disgusting dish in Taiwan?

Cuisine Food & Drink
41

[quote=“Hobart”]
Talk about grease, Southern cooking is loaded with it. And Subway is a welcome site here in Taiwan, but when back home in the US, you can find better fresher subs and sandwiches no?[/quote]

Some southern food is loaded with grease, yes! It’s akin to soul food in some ways. Like hushpuppies, which are the yummiest things in the world! But grits, pintos, cornbread, blackeyed peas, collard greens and chili aren’t fatty. They’re just heavy. And California cuisine is very very nice as well because it’s fusion food, where mexican, asian, and european tastes are blended.
San Francisco has the best selection of ethnic, healthy, and reasonably priced restaurants I’ve ever seen in any city.
Not to mention their fresh markets (again Asian, local and Mexican) and organic gourmet supermarkets (Trader Joes and Andronico’s) You’d never see anything like those in Taiwan!
Of course Subway is more of a treat here than at home, but if you’re on a diet, I’d recommend that over any other take-out food in Taiwan. I mean, where the hell can you find an extended salad bar here, anyway? Without thousand island dressing and peas and corn?

42

It’s absurdly cheap. :!: Well, I guess when they feed pigs on garbage and feces, they have pretty low overheads. :?

43

Is this the right forum for this discussion about disgusting Taiwanese food. We are supposed to be introducing new restaurants bars and clubs not complaining about the food here right?

44

You’re absolutely right, Hobart. I’m moving this thread to “Living in Taiwan” jsut as soon as I’ve OK’d it with JeffG.

45

One of the most disgusting foodsI saw in Taiwan was “re-fried beans”. Eurgh. I am told this is not in fact Taiwanese.

46

Obviously, Hex has never been to a Taco Bell (read Toxic Hell).

47

How can anyone say all of them are disgusting, while it’s true that stuff like blood chunks may be a bit out of ordinary, Pearl Milk Tea is awesome, it’s basicly milk tea with large tapiocca. One tea shop, Ten Ren has such retail chain tea houses in Toronto, Canada with many different flavors and are widely accepted by mainstream Canadian, my close friend (a Canadian of British decent) gets hooked on this thing really bad.

Stinky tofu is awesome ONLY IF it’s fried, I can’t think of people eating barbecued or steammed. Once a while I bring Taiwanese snacks to work here (in Minnesota- we have Asian stores plus I get mails from Taiwan) and my coworkers’ and supervisor’s reactions are almost always “yuk”. One time I forced one of my colleagues to smell squid jerky (you yu si), she almost died.

48

The only vegetarian food on that list that I find disgusting (well not really disgusting, just bad tasting) is bitter melon. I think you should add Durian to the list though. I think that’s the only food in Taiwan (I’m alking veggie food here) that I find disgusting. Red bean’s pretty awful too.

I’m surprised how many people hate chou dofu. I always thought that anyone who actually ties it is bound to like it. maybe I should start another poll.

Brian

49

I like it all, but moon cakes and frogspawn tea are both pretty gross – not disgusting, though.

50

I guess I should weigh in here…cho dofu makes me wanna wretch and chicken feet are the most disgusting visual I can think of…but when some coworkers took me to dinner and ordered what they called Gi Foo, I really developed a new low of lows…I was told they were the testicles of a rooster…or cock’s rocks if you will…BLEEECH

51

Aw, man…so many choices but you can only vote once…

I think there’s something wrong when you go to the Sizzler and on the salad bar, next to the thousand island dressing is a vat of chicken feet.

I have tried chou doufu, Iris. You ain’t missing anything. Quite a few things on the list I haven’t tried because I try to not eat pork (although I have a soft spot for bacon, especially wrapped around asparagus spears or in a corn soup to add flavor). The thought of eating blood or intestines disgusts me. My family is from the South and my grandmother makes chit’lins (chitterlings for all of you Northerners) every year for New Year for good luck although it makes her house reek for days after and I never touch that stuff and Southern blacks are notorious for eating parts that other people would never eat like pickled pig’s feet and ears, but suffice to say that to my knowledge, we never ever have eaten pig’s blood. Ugh. I have made a rule that if I don’t know what part of the animal it’s from, I don’t eat it and if I know and it’s still scary, I don’t eat it. F*ck good manners. Any part of the animals digestive system is out. Beef tongue, beef stomach, pig intestines, chicken lips, whatever. Feet are out. Heads are out except when eating fish…man I lo-ove the little dried fish with red chili peppers and garlic! One of my regular dishes at the rice porridge places on Fu Xing Rd. Sometimes I buy them and share them with my cat. How about creating a new poll with all of these choices for disgusting Taiwanese cuisine on which one we like the most.

In defense for hating chou doufu, I want to remind people that taste is 90% smell which is why food sucks when your nose is stuffed up. Foods like durian and chou doufu taste like they smell so I will have nothing more to do with them. I hate it when durian is in season because they put it right by the front entrance of every Wellcome so you have to endure the stench while picking out your fruits and veggies.
I have to say, my new favorite local cuisine is nian gao (year cake) that the family that I tutor for made for me today. I was skeptical when I saw the big block of ear-wax brown stuff that looked like it belonged to a “make your own soap or candle” kit than on a plate, but battered and fried, it’s pretty yummy stuff.

52

Have you eaten black pudding? The main ingredient is pig’s blood.

And: Scots consume haggis, which consists of a mixture of heart, lungs and liver of a sheep or calf, combined with suet, onions and oatmeal, seasoned with salt and pepper and boiled in a cow’s stomach. In Yorkshire, England, a favorite food is tripe - the pale yellow, rubbery stomach lining of cattle or other ruminants.

Every culture has its share of disgusting food, but the standards change depending on the presentation, I guess.
Lord knows but my old uni roommate in the southern US used to love to eat liver mush with eggs, grits and toast for breakfast. It must be the equivalent of an English fry up, which often contains black pudding.

53

Haggis cooked in a cow’s stummick? Heresey! Its traditionally cooked in a sheep’s stomach, but these days they mostly use an artifical skin, which is not nearly so good.

There’s nothing awful about offal.

Which reminds me, Wolf. When are you going to bring me another packet of those chit’lin snacks? Yummy.

54

About 8 years ago I did a canoe trip down the Yukon river with a group of friends. For a few days, we kept seeing this lone Japanese paddler. One day, we’d just pulled onto a sandbar and were making a 5 layer bean dip for lunch (rehydrated beans, salsa, cheese, avacoda, and yoghurt), when the Japanese guy floated by. We called him over to share in our lunch knowing that he’d been on the river for two weeks already and been eating mostly fish (he claimed to have caught over a 100 fish already). Well, seeing four hungry foriengers eagerly dipping nacho chips into a bowl of brown, green, red and white mush, and exlaiming how delicious it all was, must have whet his, well, curiosity anyway, for he grabbed a chip and dipped in gingerly. He took one careful bite, turned avacoda green himself, looked at us all strangely, bowed politely and got back in his canoe. We saw him a few more times after that but he never did come ashore to join us for a meal. To each his own.

55

I never thought it would happen to me, but I have actually learned to enjoy durian. I tried it a few months ago at that restaurant in Neihu that brews its own beer, and found it was really quite tasty. The king of fruit, perhaps not, but tasty.

56

I absolutely love durian, but consider the mango to be the true king of fruit.

57

No argument there.

58

…armchair science…
Durian’s taste does have some similarity to its odor, but I would say that it tastes different that its smell. Smell and taste are, after all, two distinct senses.
I suppose that you will also have nothing to do with blue cheese or any other cheese that ‘smells.’

59

Well, blue cheese doesn’t smell like dog shit the way chou doufu does.
I love Brie and Camembert, which aren’t stinky. You cannot argue that chou doufu doesn’t stink…shoot, the name means “stinky bean curd”. And I don’t touch Limburger. That’s one cheese I’ll pass on (and headcheese too, even though it’s not really a kind of cheese). I simply cannot stomach the thought of seeking out a food that has the power to stink up an entire city block. Each to their own, I guess. I suppose no one here would care for a yummy banana and mayo on wheat (although you all don’t know what you’re missing!) so I’ll let you chow down on chou doufu and durian without much further complaint.

60

reading the above posts, especially by those who are offended by some of the foods they have seen or smelled or eaten here, it strikes me as a kind of Western food racism. Maybe I am wrong, but the way so many posters find these wonderful foods to be disgusting seems to mean that they think their foods back home are superior. I just don’t get it, but I don’t get a lot of things. Why are Westerners so afraid of non-Western foods that are delicious and part of this culture?

What does the disgust and fear come from? The way some posters described things, it sounds like “white people” being afraid to mix and mingle with “non-white” people.

If you were born here, you would not have these feelings. you would like some things, dislike other things, but not in such a fanatical way. I think Sandman said it best: if you have the idea beforehand that you are going to hate something, you will hate it, or in Iris’s case, who has been here a long long time, and she still hasn’t even tried chodofu? Really? It’'s like going to France and never eating French bread. Why are Westerners so uptight about non-Western foods? [Okay, I admit, I don’t like Brussel Sprouts at all, UGH, but I do like Belgian waffles… ]

If I was a Taiwanese, and I read these earlier posts poking fun and mocking Taiwanese dishes, I would really wonder what these Westerns are doing here and why they come? Just to soak up the language, make money and split? Maybe…

chicken feet are delicious

stinky tofu is great

chicken butts on a stick are fantastic

oyster & intestine soup is delicious

fermented tofu is super, with some Tai Bi on the side
spicy blood chunks and intestine soup are wonderful
crunchy little fish (in anything) are fantastic
1000 year old egg is great, but not very good for you, I hear, healthwise

pearl milk tea is great
kaoliang is great
moon cake is delicious
di hwei gwei (blood & rice popsicle) are fun to eat at night markets, washed down with some beer

bitter melon is fantastic if served cold with ice cubes on top and with a side dish of savory sauce to dip the cold melon slices in, absolutely superb

bird’s nest soup {pass, I never had a chance to eat it, but want to try…

You know, there was this guy named Will Rogers, and he said" “I never met a man I didn’t like.” I always thought this was a brave philosophy, so I try to say, “I never met a food I didn’t like…”

I mean, eating food from countries different from our own is part of communcation with that other culture. I guess my main question is: what are people so AFRAID of? Is is a white thing? Or do other ethnic groups feel the same way about Taiwanese food?