Texture of banana but with a huge seed. Tastes like a strange combination of rotten eggs, whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, diced garlic, onions, cheese, and... caramel?
There are lots of varieties of Durian that bring out all those flavors (and possibly more) to various degrees. Supposedly some of them can be good if you acclimate and enjoy funky fruit.
The small dehydrated piece a friend brought me from Vietnam recently had tasted like if you went to a pizza joint and mixed the little containers of garlic butter and bleu cheese sauce, then added some pineapple and gasoline and a hint of vanilla custard for good measure. It was extremely weird and mostly reminded me of garbage. And for the rest of the day, the smallest burp brought back its vile ghost.
I've only had it once and I don't know what variety it was, but despite the smell it just tasted kinda like a honeydew. There was no bitterness or anything
The unusual flavour and odour of the fruit have prompted many people to express diverse and passionate views ranging from deep appreciation to intense disgust. Writing in 1856, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace provided a much-quoted description of the flavour of the durian:
The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the edible part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acidic nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience. ... as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour it is unsurpassed.[a]
Wallace described himself as being at first reluctant to try it because of the aroma, "but in Borneo I found a ripe fruit on the ground, and, eating it out of doors, I at once became a confirmed Durian eater". He cited one traveller from 1599:[b] "it is of such an excellent taste that it surpasses in flavour all other fruits of the world, according to those who have tasted it." He cites another writer: "To those not used to it, it seems at first to smell like rotten onions, but immediately after they have tasted it they prefer it to all other food. The natives give it honourable titles, exalt it, and make verses on it."
While Wallace cautions that "the smell of the ripe fruit is certainly at first disagreeable", later descriptions by Westerners are more graphic in detail. Novelist Anthony Burgess writes that eating durian is "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory". Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says:
its odor is best described as pig-excrement, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.
Other comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray and used surgical swabs.
This is the most fun I've had reading text so far today, it's like I was transported to another time and place without leaving the comfort of my own couch.
Durian is amazing if you've had it when you were younger. So if you got a young one, train them to try out new foods, fruits, vegetables, then they won't be picky eaters. I had durian when I was younger and love the shit out of it. Those who aren't, are likely to be disgusted by it.
I thought it was so good and bad at the same time. (But I feel the bad lasts longer!). I've had candy, wafers, and dried forms. The worst has always been that it makes me burp and it tastes like a restaurant dumpster smells.
It's like in a movie when someone's mind is fed ask the knowledge in the universe until they're overwhelmed and turn to dust or explode, but for taste buds.
I had garlic ice cream at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California. Everyone leaving the free sample line had the exact same expression on their face as they tried the first taste:
Slightly scrunched up have with an expression that said, "I was really expecting this to be horrible but it's not bad. Not great, but not bad."
There is an ice cream company in the state of Montana, USA, that has liquorice ice cream. I don't remember if it was salty but it had food coloring that made things interesting...
I saw a recipe on.Bon Appetit for an orange juice and coffee drink, my initial impression was "no way" but I modified it a little and really liked it.
Cold brew, fresh squeezed orange juice, and Topo Chico fizzy water, poured over ice.
I also like the salad that is fennel, oranges and olives and onions, and also the Mexican fruit salad that's pineapple, mango, jicama, onion, with citrus juice dressing and cotija sharp crumbled cheese.
I think that's it for combinations that sound awful to me but taste good to me.
I like Campari in orange juice quite a lot, and love it in grapefruit based cocktails. Siesta with 2x the Campari is actually so good after the first sip to calibrate. In coffee though? Seems like it would amplify the unpleasant flavors in both.
Broom flavored soda. Buddy of mine made homemade sodas and did fun experiments and one went wrong so he called it broom soda because that's exactly how it tasted. He added to much sugar somewhere and it partial melted and had this weird texture that mimicked sand. It's such a weird drink to describe.
4/10 fun to laugh about but not to try more than a swig.
Here in Finland some product developers have a weird obsession over adding the taste of salty liquorice to everything.
So naturally there are also sodas and other products which taste of salty liquorice. And a whole bunch of combinations to things like "cinnamon bun + salty liquorice" like wtf who would ever enjoy that
If you want to try a very divisive cocktail, you need to go no further than the classic Negroni. I absolutely love them, but they are not for everyone. Extremely bitter and astringent - you certainly don't gulp this one down. To me, it's the most "adult" of adult alcoholic beverages. You either love or or despise it.
I hate the negroni. Don't understand it, it's way too sweet, way too bitter, but mostly just sickeningly sweet. Like if it was dumped into a glass of soda water or lemon water it would probably be ok.
Absinthe I think is just divisive because licorice/anise flavor is polarizing. I like it in cocktails, like Sambucca too. I love licorice flavors in general though.
I used to work in a bar. Somebody ordered a Malibu (coconut liqueur) with tonic water. I tasted some out of curiosity. It was weird, but not in a good way.
I love coffee, so I had high hopes for this being really good. It tasted like someone mixed sugar, red wine, and coffee. Horrible. Tangy. Oddly sweet. Just weird. I can't imagine a boardroom of people at Dunkin tasted this crap and said "ship it!"
A few years ago Brachs candy I think it was made Thanksgiving dinner flavored Candy Corn. They had turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, greenbean, apple pie, and gravy candy corns mixed in a bag. The cranberry apple pie were great but the stuffing tasted like vomit. Everything else was just meh. I never bought a bag again.
A lot of the recent Coca-Cola flavors like the space one have been weird as fuck and sit in a vague middle point between "okay" and "absolutely disgusting." And I mean that in a way that has you questioning whether it's alright or gross.
This might not seem weird to many buy as a north american I had never encountered anything like it.
Shiso spice on rice.
It was a completely foreign flavor to me; like nothing I'd ever tasted before. Not a single thing in the north american diet is remotely close to what it tastes like. I saw there awestruck for a moment.
You can buy it online from Amazon wherever you're located. I got a bunch when I was going through a period experimenting with East Asian spices and condiments.
Marshmallow and chips. Dry they were okay, I could separate the flavours, but with gravy added the flavour of the marshmallows mixed in with the gravy and chips and the whole lot tasted horrible.
Oh like poutine but with marshmallows instead of cheese curds? With just fries and marshmallows I could possibly understand the idea, but that does sound horrible.
I've had a few of the Jones Soda holiday packs, where they would make the tastes of various winter holidays into sodas. Cranberry sauce soda was ok. Turkey soda, not so much. However, the worst was Christmas Garland, which tasted like Pine-sol.
My partner had another of the holiday packs. He said most of them were okay but not awful, but the Buttered Roll soda tasted like carbonated butter and it was horrible.
Thing with the weirdest flavor, or flavor of the weirdest thing?
Thing with the weirdest flavor: Durian. Fucking gross. Ate it by accident (was in a dish I ordered). It tasted exactly like papaya or mango soaked in mop bucket water for 2 days.
Flavor of the weirdest thing: Probably Escargot. That was garlic and snail flavored.
Escargot is french for snail. And "persillade", which is basically parsley and garlic sauce is the most common thing they're served with. So that makes perfect sense why that tasted like that.
Never had a durian before and I'm not sure I wanna try after that description. Especially since I'm not a huge fan of papayas or mangoes.
I tried durian pancakes at an Asian market once, and didn't see what all the fuss was about. It tasted kinda coconut-y and onion-y, but not enough to be a big deal.
Ten minutes later I burped and realised I had made a terrible mistaking eating those things.
They have one called "Pink Drink". It's not available bottled, The only place I ever had it was at Austin City limits Festival a few years before the pandemic. It's kind of a Prickly-pear Lemonade flavored soda. It was without a doubt the most delicious, refreshing beverage I have ever consumed, and the fact that I've never been able to find it since then is actually one of the biggest disappointments of my life.
I used to work at Starbucks and we'd make weird shit out of curiosity. The best one was uncut cold brew coffee and their strawberry refresher base. Uncut cold brew and lemonade wasn't terrible but way too acidic for my liking.
Agreed! I'm also grossed out by the people who would get the Passion tea (which is made with hibiscus and lemongrass, and is very acidic) with heavy cream. It curdled damn near instantly and was just.... nasty.
Not so weird to me or most Cubans, but prolly to the rest of the world: malta with a spoonful or two of sweetened and condensed milk. Pour the malta into a glass, then add the milk and stir until evenly mixed. Drink. If you're not used to the flavor of malta, this combo may be too much to start off with.
I once had a burger stuffed with crushed Oreos and topped with frosting. That specific combo wasn't exactly good, though I did finish it. The sweetness kinda worked, but it was way too much.
Ever since then though I've been meaning to make something more toned-down, maybe a burger with a honey glaze or something cause I think that'd turn out really good.
A Luther Burger, or doughnut burger (among several naming variations), is a hamburger or cheeseburger with one or more glazed doughnuts in place of the bun. These burgers have a disputed origin, and tend to run between approximately 800 and 1,500 calories (3,300 and 6,300 kJ).
During Christmas, our student union used to sell a drink called Julmust. I bought one or of curiosity and thought the first sip was horrible, but by the end of the bottle I was hooked. Was very sad when they stopped selling it
"45 million litres of julmust are consumed during December ( in Sweden), which is around 50% of the total soft drink volume in December and 75% of the total yearly must sales."
Oyster flavored ice cream. First surprise was that it actually tasted like oysters, second was that it was actually good as a ice cream. I wouldn't mix it with more "normal" flavors though
Prepare to get crazy mad, but I absolutely despise marshmallows.
They feel so weird especially in my mouth. I feel like I'm eating a bunch of candle wax mixed with white sticky liquid (can't say anymore hints) mixed with whipped cream and powdered sugar and glue and coconut (which I already don't like) and expired milk but without the sourness, all this while it's in the process of solidification, with lots of air trapped inside, and yet it all tastes like the most artificial, fakest recreation of apple flavor I've ever tasted. I feel like I immediately get drunk, high, and on drugs all at the same time as soon as I put just one of these puffcylinders into my mouth. I can't even swallow it, it tastes this bad.
And you're expecting me to burn this piffy puffle substance then mix it with chocolate and biscuit? This is giving me an absolute stroke.
Prepare the downvotes. I have just roasted (pun not intended) everyone's favorite gelatin snack, and it might as well be the most offensive thing I've said about food.