MACHITOS: goat innards stuffed in the goats stomach lining wrapped w/ the goats intestines, chopped up in a semi-crispy corn tortilla, mexican lime juice w/ pico de gallo......mmm DELICIOUS, MENUDO: nice, hot spicy & flavorful soup consisting of cow stomach lining, hominy, fresh diced onions & cilantro w/ lime juice, BEEF BARBACOA: nice, dark tender cow cheek, which will include if desired, the cow brain, tongue and eyeballs....great w/ any mexican breakfast combination, MOLLEJAS: also known as sweetbread which is the cows thyroid gland, TRIPAS: cow intestines, deep fried.....AWESOME, DUCK BALUT.

of course the chicken feet, pig feet, cow feet... feet are good but they make you so fat! eek!
Jellyfish salad (with green papaya) is really yummy - should never taste fishy!
I was never a great fan of the lower goose, pig, or chicken intestines... kinda... poopey.. lol
I did eat grilled fish ovaries with a chili type sauce. I bought them raw at a Korean supermarket in LA. They were just ok but I think if i knew how to cook them the right way they would have been better. Like AZ says, "you can put an old shoe in that sauce and it would be delicious!"
I also had a chicken bought from a live chicken market and it had all the organs inside it still, including some undeveloped eggs. THAT was good!

Jeez, I would absolutely LOVE to meet AZ himself. I just wish people would be more open to different foods. They are missing out! We eat so many chemicals and artificial crap when there are such great things out there. We could all eat more real food and weigh less and feel better if we were just open to things without red40 or blue 2 lake... not to mention all the man made partially hydrogenated oils that will last beyond a lifetime...

For some reason, I just tend to really like everything. Some things (I didn't find them too "bizarre") my friends though I was crazy for eating:

- Both chicken and duck Balut aka hot ga lon and hot vit lon
-Sea Urchin aka Uni, I only enjoy it fresh out of the moving shell
-Fried fish that still had a moving head. Tasty but sort of heart breaking.
- All raw fish/shell fish (mmm... love oysters... and toro)
-Durian, I actually enjoy it when it is very fresh and then popped into the freezer just to get a little icy... like ice cream...mmm
-Champulinos (crickets.... and grasshoppers)
-Meal worms
-squirrel BBQ'd
-Stinky tofu (**not actually from Taiwan though! only from Los Angeles! I look forward to eating the real stuff)
-beef brains - like scrambled eggs
I love oxtail and beef tongue and the CHEEKS!! mmmm....
My Grandma used to get lamb heads from the butcher and she would rub spices all over them and roast them all day then serve them in the middle of the table with lots of freshly made tortillas and rice and beans and 3 different salsas... Those are the tastiest heads ever... oh and fish head soup.. thats good too.
Now I'm hungry!!    

I go crazy for beef cheek meat, beef tounge, all the "not so desired" parts of the chicken like gizzards, fried chicken feet and don't even get me started on pig ears and tails, pickled pigs feet...yummy!!!  I am a big fan of chittlins, and any weird sea foods!!!!  There is one thing I have tried that I would say is the most interesting....squirrel brains!  Very good!

Filipino dish my mother-in-law made me one weekend.  It is tripe and other organ meat cooked in bile.  Bitter does not do it justice.  I was not a big fan, the bile was too much.  The tripe and other organ mean was great. 

The most bizarre food I have ever had was in the island of Borneo, located at the geographic center of Maritime Southeast Asia. The Dayak people, indigenous to Borneo invited me over for dinner.

I had open fire roasted monkey. It's gamey, tasty, and it was delicious.

In West Java Island, I had deep fried chicken intestines. Crispy and salty; very good indeed.

 

 

Whenever I visit my dad in the jungle of the Yucatan, one of my all time favorites are the tacos. Made with Poc chuc (pulled milk fed piglet) with fried tongue and ears. I've also had orchata made from mil-worms and wheat(totally disgusting).

being from Mississippi I've had chitlans, turtles, alligator, armadillo, raccoon, and well everybody here loves crawfish   

The most Bizzare food that I have ever eaten would have to be chocolate covered ants and grasshoppers.  they were delicious.

I am from Pennsylvania but my father is from Brazil and most of the bizarre foods I've had were there for sure.  I grew up eating ox tails.  I've also eaten turtle.  Pato no Tucupi (boiled duck in a broth made of scalded cassava)  in Belem, Brazil.  Acai "before it became the next big thing."  Dried salted shrimp and chicken with blood sauce (galinha ao molho pardo in Brazil -northeast).  I also have had acaraje (street food in Brazil).  Vatapa, which is made of bread, shrimp and coconut milk and also very popular there.  Caju fruit.  You have to go Brazil!  Beautiful country, great food.        

I eat a variety of exotic foods on regular basis. Recently I tried stir fry Python, as well as Wild Boar rack of ribs. Next will be Bison testicles. In December we did Black Bear and African Lion. Didn't care for the Bear, but the Lion was very good. Another favorite of mine is Halibut cheeks. 

 

 

I was raised on a farm so i've had a lot of weird things.... testicles, liver, cow tongue (sliced on crackers with garlic salt is very good), crawdads (taste like shrimp). The most bizarre thing i've had is probably in Mexico. I was a some peoples house and we all went pigeon hunting. They slowly cooked it in this mexican sauce. Very different yet very good!

DURIAN, balut, chicken feet, ox tail, pig feet, blood sausage, snail, cow tongue, crawfish, alligator bites, octapus raw... thats all i could remember :) I LOVE U AZ!!!!! COME TO NYC PLEASSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! I HAVE TO MEET YOU!!

I was 11 when my started my bizzare food lifestyle,I was fishing with friends & getting annoyed that tiny Bluegill kept getting on our lines & stealing our bait.So I vowed that the next time that it happened that I would bite off the head of the fish chew it up & swallow it.The dares started flyin the Bluegill kept true & being a man/boy of my word I had my first Sashimi meal..I am 40 now & still tryin new & Bizzare food.

When I was growing up we always had beef tongue and creamed cod fish over potatoes. Since then I have tried and like octopus, squid, escargo, cavier, anchovies, crab, lobster, abalone, shrimp, mussels, scallops, chicken hearts and liver, duck, venison, goose, buffalo and once when I was little a raw earth worm. The earth worm is the only thing I wouldn't eat again. I want to try many more things that I haven't been exposed to yet.

That is one of the main spices for the national dish of Senegal. It smells really bad, almost vile...however, it gives the dish an uncomparable flavor. There is no way to describe it. You gotta have the dish. It is to die for. Have it first and then check out the "dried fish" afterwards.

It's really hard to say what I've eaten is "Bizzare" now because so many Bizzare foods are more main stream these days. Besides "Bizzare" food is only bizzare to some people while normal for others. My list: Gizzards, giblets, intestine pasta, tripe (all sorts), liver, kidneys, raw fish of all sorts (Monk fish liver), raw baby octupus, buffalo, elk, testicles, etc... All of which were tasty and not that Bizzare for many.

The most bizzare thing I've ever eaten was BBQ Raccoon Ribs....It was a little chewy, but very good!~*Emily Renee*~

For me it's a toss up...  Raw cow brain and raw beef liver (both of which were wonderful), found at a Korean BBQ restaurants in Tokyo.

These are some of the bizarre things I have eaten.  Not much, but I'm working on that!

~BBQ Alligator 

~Recently tried Caviar and raw oyster freshly shucked (sp?)  I Must say once you get past the feeling of it being like a giant booger, its quite good!

Finally, Im a Norwegian, so my grandpa made alot of traditional old counrty foods for us while he was alive.  I tried Lutafisk and salted Cod with potato bread or Lefse..these were definetly the most bizarre. 

Ive also had many traditional Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Jamaican & Haitian/Creole dishes because I lived in Florida for 8 months while I did my internship.  They were all amazing and some were a bit bizarre.

 

I've had guniea pig, pigeon, snake, monkfish liver, ants, and chicken heads stuffed with blood, but I have to say the most bizarre has to be the bull penis pho. Not bad, but definitely bizarre.

My Hungarian father introduced me at a very young age to Raw Beef!!  Today, it is not recommended that one eats raw beef of any kind, but think about it... what is very rare steak? My dad would only eat raw beef from his butcher friend.  It had to be freshly ground, ground round.  He would always stress, "No pork fillers!!"  Raw pork, he said, was definately unsafe to eat (and he was very right.)  I developed quite a taste for it when served on one slice of fresh rye bread, with a generous topping of chopped raw white onions, salt and black pepper.  Incidentally, I'm from the Milwaukee area, and this would traditionally be served at my family's wedding reception buffets.  So, I was a little disappointed when AZ did not include it in his Milwaukee feature on the Wisconsin show.  Maybe next time, Andrew.  A good Polish German wedding reception is something to experience! Hope you had Gemitlekeit (sp.) in Milwaukee!!

When we were kids we went to the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma and we would shine flashlights in the frogs' eyes to blind them and then we'd grab them by their legs.  But the weirdest thing was that water moccians (snakes) would swim after our boat and I was afraid to reach in the water to grab them.  My mom was bit 3 times on the butt thinking it was a cradhead pinching her. 

Frog legs breaded and fried taste just like chiken but little did we know we probably should have been eating the snakes too with balsamic vinegar and bread.

blood sausage, head cheese, gizzards, heart etc courtesy of my Norwegian grandfather. I have never touched lutefisk ugh.

Turtle, alligator, frog legs, unknown meats in creole dishes, unknown meats in Bahamian dishes (we took a scooter out of Freeport and found a local's village. Very interesting). Numerous wild game...too much to list. Some i just ate & don't know what it was. I don't have any bad memories except for being handed a scallop that crunched

The most bizarre food I have tasted in my life, is -by far a way- the monkey meat is eaten in Veracruz, Mexico, in the region of Catemaco and water of chagalapoli (is a seasonal fruit, small and similar to fresh coffee, very acidic). The meat, prepared in grill, with lots of spices, tastes great.

The strangest thing I've ever had was drum sushi....I was fishing on the Cumberland river one day and was having no luck until the end of the day, I caught a Drum fish. I had been out there all day and was very hungry so I just scaled it and picked the meat off the bones....sweet and delicious!

P.S. I'm one of your biggest fans! Leo

Well, I'm originally from Texas so I've eaten just about anything that could be consider beef including calf fries.  But I also spent alot of time in Mexico so beef togue tacos or menudo which is made with tripas (tripe) is nothing unusual.  I actually love menudo and miss it very much since I've moved to Michigan.  Beef tongue should be tried by all.  It is probably the best cut of beef you can eat.   I spent a month in the interior of Mexico and at a wedding had my first of cabrito which was goat that they prepared in a pit of charcoal with the meat wrapped in catus leaves and left overnight.  Oh my goodness!!  It was very, very delicious! Capozzo

I was just in a small village outside of Tulumben, Bali, where the village had a 60th birthday party for my German friend who owns a villa there.  She had always wished for an authentic Babi Guling (suckling pig) dinner.  The pork was very tasty, however, the fresh blood, shredded coconut salad with extremely hot spices (I can only imagine that was to maintain that perfectly "fresh beet" look) was nasty!!!  I was sure it was a beet salad, but found it to be so hot.  And I couldn't taste the beets, so I took another bite before asking what it was.  I don't believe they serve this in the restaurants due to the fact the salad has to be eaten within 6 hours of the slaughtering of the pig.  I'm usually fairly adverturous, but this was a bit too much for me!!!  One of my new life lesson -- if in doubt, ask before you eat it!!  I was so sure it was a shredded beet salad............

Here's my top 10 from Thailand, in no particular order:

 

1) Live tiny shrimps spicy salad. The dish was literally called "dancing shrimps." Sort of like a macabre joke for me. [edited:] The shrimps "dance" initially vigorously, and eventually slow-cooked by burning red peppers and acidic lime juice.

2) Tadpoles and spices baked in banana leaves. Taste like a frog, but a little earthier.

3) Deep-fried assorted larvae and bugs. They foggied the dish with soy sauce, and usually served as "beer nuts." All are nice, except for one kind of water bug - it's tiny, black, and shiny - smell and taste like bad sewer with strong earthy aroma. Oh, and the stink stays for hours. This is the worst thing I've ever had so far. I'm not sure if that night I was intoxicated and got sick, or had that bug for one bite and got sick.

4) Sticky rice cooked in bamboo with beans (or banana) and coconut milk. Brilliant.

5) Snake curry. Yum!

6) Grilled fighting cock. Most of them, if not all, are the late losers of the match. It's more chewy and leaner than standard American chicken, but that's the best texture of poultry meat I've had in my life. The skin is the best.

7) Chicken's reproductive organs and undeveloped eggs in spicy soup. Yeah, chicken's vagina soup. The eggs look like egg yolk with no shell. The texture is like hard-boiled egg white, while the taste is strongly like egg yolk. And name aside, chicken's reproductive organs are pretty tangy and chewy. It has a texture resembles to intestine, only a tad softer. [edited: + spongier, soup-indulged goodier]

8) Chicken's hearts, liver, gizzards, and rumps on skewers. Amazing. They're treated as to-go snacks.

9) Snake and herbs wine. Truly disgusting, even for a serious drinker like myself.

10) Fresh durian, deep-fried durians, and durian paste. Yes, the smell is very unpleasant, but the custard flesh was quite a worthy experience. If you hate the smell so much - and this one to you, Andrew - try having it deep-fried. It's like sweet chips with only slightly smell of durian. As for durian paste, there are some smell, yes, but a little milder than fresh ones. Very sweet and chewy, sweeter than the fresh ones.

Disclaimer: Having durian simultaneously with alcohol can be highly fatal to your life. The higher the alcohol content, the more risk you take.

 

Now, anyone wants to go to Thailand? 

My top 5 would be boiled sea turtle guts (stomach, liver, intestine) in a soup...it was deliciuos 2. racoon and racoon bone marrow soup, was ok. 3 i speared a cuttle fish in panama and ate it raw under water...i wouldnt suggest this to anyone with a weak stomach, it was pretty good but it made me sick later. 4. Fried sea turtle...my absolute favorite food. 5. grilled snapper eye balls

Ant larva, pan fried and make tacos out of it had it in mexico cant remeber where b ut was great. "i was young when i had it , wish i knew what type of ants"

I was in Norway, had a nice buffet and went for a 2nd taste of something really good.. only after I finished, I was told that those nice square piece of tender meat were.. whale!

Not really proud about, but I can tell you, it was superb..

Livermush from North Carolina is the best tasting bizarre food in the USA

 

The most bizarre food I have ever eaten was  water snake soup garnished with   clover, frog legs, with a side of lilly pad roots. The lilly pad root is at the base of the water plant and looks and tastes like a  potatoe. The plants were boiled twice in fresh water. The snake and  frogs were caught in a lake in upstate NY on a  camping trip.  The snake  tasted like beef an the frogs like chicken. When Clover is  boiled its a little chewy but tastes similar to Spinach.  Everything tasted really good!    

This BBC story lists things that show that Zimmern is taking it easy on his audience, protecting us from the truly bizarre:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8076671.stm

 

The story is about China's move to restaurants from selling snake-bitten chickens -- chickens killed by having poisonous snakes bite them to death. It also lists civit cat, deer fetus soup, and monkey brains scooped from a live animal. I'd actually heard of the last dish, but I always thought it was a fable, a story told by grade-schoolers to gross each other out. 

Blood sausage in Vietnam. When I was in the Army, I was a medical specialist (Medic) and I had the honor to serve with a special outfit and we went into the Mountain Yards for recon. We were furnished with a grand feast. One Item that remains in my mind was dogblood sausage. I loved until I found out what it was. Even though I kept eating I assumed that was the only strange thing I ate. When we returned to base I was told of all the things I did eat.mostly bow-wow.....

but they do taste good!

- beetles cooked in adobo style, a delicacy from nueva ecija

- balut (boiled duck eggs complete with the chick) sold in the streets of manila

- chicken feet cooked in adobo style

- chicharong bulaklak (deep-fried pork intestines)

- bopis (pig's lungs and heart with bell pepper and onions)

When we were children we would shoot Robbins and roast the breast over open fires, Tastes like dove breast.

For dinner yesterday at the Full Kee restaurant in Chinatown DC I tried 2 dishes. Pork skin in duck blood, which was AWESOME and I also had cold jellyfish, very fishy taste and not too bad on texture but if you had the sauce on there it was perfect. Very happy tummy here

rob, monkey meat in the phillipines

Cantonese Chicken feet, stinky tofu and hairy crab in Shanghai.

 Yak jerky and some really awesome spicy tofu. Goose intestine, beef stomach and a cool pepper seed that translates to prickly ash....(it makes your tongue tingle) in hot pot in Chengdu.

Fish eyes, mantis shrimp, jelly fish salad, sea snails and silk worms in Qingdao.

Plenty of Sashimi, Octopus raw and in ink. Sulfur blackened eggs from sulfur springs and plenty of stuff cooked on a stick in Japan.

Ostrich and Emu, alligator tail and rattle snake, snapping turtle fried and in soup. Pork brains and that was probably the least desirable that I have tried.  

Sichuan food rocks!! Andrew should do a show on the Sichuan area and the sea food of Qingdoa........the beer is a bonus.

If you ever get the chance to visit China, do it!  You will definitely get the chance to experience some bizarre and amazing food.  I did the fish eyes, chicken feet, cow stomach, yak, etc. but the silk worm was really something special.  It looked like a little fried potato.  Didn't taste like one though.

For me I would have to say chitlins at this point. I tried them once at at ex-girlfriend's house. At first, they did not seem to have a great deal of taste, but after I swallowed I got a strong after-taste towards the back of my tongue. I didn't really care for the taste and I could only eat two. However, I am much more willing to try odd foods now.

I used to get sea urchins straight from the water and crack them open for the eggs all the time.  I've also had pig feet and ears.  Fried alligator.. Cows tongue in high school... Oh, and grilled chicken hearts.

I joke when I say the most Bizarre Food I have eaten is a "Dodger Dog!"  I mean anybody who has ever eaten a hot dog that is not kosher should be able to eat ANYTHING!!!  BUT, my beloved Grandfather, Melvin Croft, was a pig farmer.  The butcher house and the smoke house were right behind my grandparent's house on their farm in Dellwood, Florida.  When I was a little girl I use to turn the sausage mill with my Grandfather's secret recipe he mixed with his hands.  We ate EVERY piece of the pig - EVERY piece, from the chitlins to the feet to the tripe to the skin cut in bite size pieces and fried in the lard in a fire heated stone fryer outside the butcher house.  Use your imagine.  Delicious!!  I have eaten a goat head in Turkey, I adore escargot, raw oysters on the half shell, fried aligator tail, smoked eel, caviar, and scrambled pig brains with eggs and grits.  I have an illogical fear that I'm going to die before I get to try everything there is to eat and drink in the world.  I think Andrew has the most FANTASTIC job in the world.  I would love to be his traveling companion!!  HE NEEDS A PARTNER IN EATING!!!

Move over and save me some of that. FOX is the most odd thing I have ever eaten, ground up with some beef fat and made into burgers. It has a kind of swelling sinsation at the back of you throat after you swollow, but good never the less. An old neighbor of mine was in the Vietnam War and told me that its tastes like dog and had killed it and cooked it up and pointed out the fresh skin streched out to dry.

The most bisarre food I have eaten is Nutria probably,, last week I cooked a Nutria and Sausage Sauce Picaunt. It was awesome, I have more in the freezer ready to cook, of course us cajun's south Lousiana eating Beef Tongue, Beef Tripe, Turtle Sauce Picaunt, Ox Tail, Beef Debris, is nothing unusual. Even though Nutria looks like a rat and is of the rodent family, all they mostly eat is vegetation. I find the meat has a very clean look and smell.