Kara and Nate (hosts) compile a chronological roundup of the strangest foods they tried during years of travel to ~100 countries. They define 'strange' as culturally relative (different from an American perspective), describe initial discomfort and later openness, and narrate tasting experiences including fried tarantula and scorpion in Cambodia; balut (partially fertilized duck egg) in Vietnam; sheep testicles, head (lambesvið), brain, tongue and eyeballs in Lebanon, Iceland, and Jordan; ‘‘penis fish’’ and live octopus in South Korea; Vegemite in Australia; jungle/pit beer and palm grubs in the Amazon; lamb intestines in Turkey; horseshoe crab in Thailand; guinea pig in Peru; fermented shark in Iceland; and stinky tofu in Taiwan. The hosts emphasize travel’s role in expanding palates and fostering cultural understanding.
Chapters
Oh.
Ooh. Do we.
The head. Here we go.
I don't know that I can put that in my mouth.
Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.
You are such a weenie. I'm trying not to breathe. Oh, my gosh.
All right, who's next? What do you want? First brain, first tongue. And on my first eyeball.
We're Kara and Nate. We've spent the last four years traveling full time, pursuing our goal of visiting 100 countries and all seven continents. Like many of you, the coronavirus has completely flipped our world upside down.
We are back in Nashville.
So while we're stuck at home, we're taking this time to look back at some of our most memorable moments. In our last video, we showed you the 15 most unique accommodations we've ever stayed in. And in this video, we're going to look at the strangest foods we've tried from around the world. So I think we'll try the lamb festivals.
Okay, before we get started, I think it's important to define the word strange. Strange and bad are not synonymous. Strange just means different from what is usual, ordinary, or expected. So these are foods that seem strange to us from an American perspective, but that doesn't mean that we think negatively about anyone from countries where the these foods are commonly eaten, and we definitely aren't passing any judgment.
We'd like to preface this video by saying that neither one of us were adventurous eaters before we started traveling, like at all.
When we met in high school, Kara's favorite food was chicken nuggets.
That's what I would order at a.
Restaurant, any restaurant, anytime we went on a date.
Also, we're not proud of many of our reactions in this video to some of the foods that we tried, especially.
In the early days. We've come a long way.
We have, and now we'll eat pretty much anything with a smile on our face.
So if you think, wow, they seem like horrible people, that is going to the trash can. Oh, my gosh. It just shows you how much travel can change you as a person. There's just something about travel that pushes you outside of your comfort zone. It teaches you to be open minded. And there's just something about being far away from home that encourages you to try things that you would have never considered considered in your normal life routine, like cage diving with great white sharks, polar plunging in Antarctica, jumping off hanging platforms, or putting things in your mouth that you would have previously not considered edible, like most of the foods on this list.
All right, let's get started.
The first Time we really stepped out of our food comfort zone was just a few weeks into our life of full time travel back in 2016, when we decided to try a full fried tarantula and a scorpion from a street food vendor on the streets of Cambodia.
It's a lot meatier than the cricket. As we were being egged. Egged. Egged.
Egged.
Egged.
Egged on. I think it's egged egg on. Insight urge ahead. Provoked, as in Jack is always egging me on to drive faster.
As we were being egged on by two Australians. She's going to eat the top half. No, not the claws.
I know. Those are scary.
How nice of him to leave the claws for you.
They were so funny.
Just one big bite. Put it in.
Really? I had the crickets yesterday.
Go on.
Sorry.
Okay. No, that one doesn't have any legs.
That's okay.
How about that one?
Oh, gross.
Oh, you were so brave.
To be honest, they didn't taste bad at all. They tasted like crunchy soy sauce. It was just the texture of their spiky legs and the chewiness. It tastes kind of fuzzy. It made them hard to swallow.
So chewy. It doesn't go away.
How we eat. This last year, we found ourselves back in Vietnam with Kara's dad trying another local delicacy. This was Kara's dad's first time in Southeast Asia, and we told our tour guide that we wanted to push him out of his comfort zone, but when she stopped. Street vendor who was selling partially fertilized eggs. Yeah. You were more nervous than evil.
Oh, maybe just one. Maybe that one. I don't know if I can do that. Your dad took it like a champ.
Like, I think it caught him off guard at first.
You first.
And me, too. I didn't know we were eating that.
Are we a duck inside? Yeah. Yeah.
Close eye and then try. Close your eyes and try.
I'll do it.
Okay. We are about to eat. Eat duck. A duck egg.
Duck egg with, like, a partially formed baby duck. I thought that's, like, what was gonna make the video is his discomfort.
And he's like, oh, tastes like chicken.
Weird texture. No, tastes like chicken. We got a different piece. Roasted chicken.
Not bad. And then he went back for more.
I have another piece of this right now. Wow. Proud of you, Kevin.
Good job, dad. Shout us up our own food tour.
Very good.
As we were putting this list together, we realized that several of the items were just different parts of a sheep that different cultures consider delicacies. Like the sheep testicles that two locals Ordered for us in Lebanon.
We can order something else, and we can share altogether.
That's great.
Okay. We had never met these men before. We just got seated at a table with them, and next thing we knew, they were ordering our lunch for us. This is the testicle. Simple and easy. The testicle. You can go like that and get.
Some sauce, get some testicles.
Okay.
I never thought I would be eating lamb testicles.
I just thought about it for a second. It's delicious.
I'm not kidding. It's, like, so good. Tender. I just can't believe your first impression.
Was kind of like, what I'm doing. How am I doing that? Really?
They were so nice. They got a kick out of it, too.
They really took us under their weight.
My friend. Nice to meet you. Pleasure talking to you and seeing you. Okay, bye. Bye. Gosh.
I want that hummus with the fried chickpeas on top and the olive oil.
We've been drooling watching these videos. Not like some of them, but okay.
Moving on.
In Iceland, half of a sheep's head with the brain removed is considered a delicacy.
Which is a lamb.
A sheep's head.
A sheep head. It's called lambesvid. So I think it's a lamb head.
That could be true. And it's traditionally eaten during a midwinter festival. We decided to try it while we were there with my sister and her husband. Not bad. But it's weird. Though. Many Icelanders consider the eye to be the best part of the head, I was the unlucky one who lost a bet and had the privilege of eating the one and only eyeball. 1, 2, 3, 4. Roll.
It was Nate's idea to roll a dice to see who had to eat it. He rolled his number.
The horse speaks. To be fair, I don't think anybody else would have actually eaten it.
No.
I'm scared it's gonna crunch. I'm scared it's gonna pop.
No, it's gonna be a gusher.
Oh, yeah.
The song of my song. It's in itself. Okay. It didn't pop. It's kinda like that. There's more if you want.
Didn't taste that bad. You're better than us. It's just super weird.
That's it.
Yeah.
Take out the brain from inside. I never thought this day would come. We are about to eat its brain.
Untunk. Yeah.
Unlike Iceland, in Jordan, the sheep's brain is not removed when the head is cooked. It's actually considered a delicacy as well. And while we were there, Our local friends took us to a restaurant that specialized in serving every part of part of the sheath, including the brain. Brain's not bad.
Yeah, it's not. And the tongue? Oh, the tongue's much better.
And the eyeball. It was my turn to eat an eyeball.
I think mine was better, though.
I did not think you were gonna do it. I don't think our guide thought you were gonna do it.
He was so.
He was fault until. What did you say? It tasted like chicken.
And he was like, kind of tastes like chicken.
Like chicken.
In his mind, he was like, no.
Oh, yeah.
He's really stuck.
In South Korea, we visited a fish market and sought out a couple of the most unique local dishes. How much for an octopus? 5,000. After buying a penis fish and a live octopus from a vendor. Oh, my gosh, that is crazy. We took it to a food stall located right around the corner and had them both prepared in traditional style.
You heard that, right? We ate something that is actually called penis fish.
Oh, that feels so weird. Oh, it's squirting. We've been told that's what it translates to in cross Korean.
Whoa. The wiggling octopus isn't alive. It just has nerves, I guess, that continue moving after it dies. So we weren't eating live octopus. There was just still, like, nerves that were making it move around.
It literally, like, tentacled to the back of my throat.
That was.
An experience.
I've heard that most people that are not Australian think that this is disgusting. So far, most of the foods that have been on this list have been unique for their form, but Vegemite made the list because of its distinct taste.
It looks like chocolate.
It does. Oh, it does not smell like chocolate.
Oh, that's disgusting.
And because I didn't realize what I was doing the first time I tried it, and I put way too much of it on a piece of bread. I asked a guy at a gas station how to eat this, and he told me on toast. And my reaction is something that I'm not really proud of. This was the early days.
Oh.
That'S disgusting. Before we had realized to be sensitive to other cultures.
Stinky tofu, and some sensitive to others in a lounge.
And thanks to our new friend who lives in Australia, we've been able to give Vegemite a second chance. And we are proud to say we.
Have come a long way.
We know how to properly eat Vegemite now, and we kind of like it. So our friend told us to think of Vegemite like salt or, like. Like, if we took a whole jar of salt and dumped it on this piece of bread. It would be really bad, but a little piece of salt. Piece of salt. But a little pinch of salt enhances it and makes it really yummy. Cheers.
It really does enhance it.
I mean, it's still kind of weird.
It's strange, not weird.
Okay, I'll have to look up the definition of weird.
I see how this could, like, become addicting. Like, I'm not there yet.
There is something about it. Yeah, I hit the spot. All this food taught on me.
Hungry.
One of the most underrated experiences we've had in our travels to 100 countries was spending a day bushwhacking through the Amazon jungle with the local. And we were like, deep in the Amazon jungle. Like, that was crazy.
Yeah, those videos are underrated. Maybe we didn't do a good job filming them, but like, the experience, I.
Mean, it was just us and that super awesome guy and he's just like.
And it's not like. I mean, we booked a tour, but that wasn't set up for tourists. Like, we didn't go to like a fake Amazon village, right?
Yeah, we just passed like these random people just living in the jungle.
And he was like, do you want to try this thing?
I think so.
Do people do this?
Would you offer it to me if it would make me sick? I hope not.
It's delicious.
So we just thought we were going on a hike. But that day we were presented with two very unique culinary experiences. The first one was what our guide referred to as jungle milk, otherwise known as pit beer. And to this day, when I really think about what we drank, it's probably the one that grosses me out. Gracias.
So the people that work here are in the process of making jungle beer. They've dug up these yucca roots and they are like peeling the yuca roots and they're putting them in this pot. They'll be boiled in the pot, they'll smash up the yuca, and then the lady that was just here will chew it up and smash. Spit it back in the pot. Because apparently that helps the fermentation process. And then you drink it.
You drink what was in someone's mouth.
Ooh. Remember we said we were more culturally.
Sensitive now that was so much fun, though.
Also, this man's five year old daughter is much better with a knife than I am. I'm a little embarrassed right now. Later that day, we stopped for lunch and we learned that our guide had been collecting park palm grubs to cook for Us over the fire. It comes from the jungle, but.
Oh, my God.
Wow. Those are huge. They can bite you really well. We're gonna make a shish kebab of this. Thankfully, puncturing them with the stick allowed most of the inside juices to escape before we bit in. So the explosion that happened inside of my mouth wasn't as bad as expected. Palm grubs are good. Not getting the rest of them.
They were so big.
I will say though, of, like, all the things we've eaten, like, my expectation of how bad it was going to taste and how it actually tasted, it was pretty good. If you could mentally remove yourself from.
Yeah, I'm with you on that.
I think it was just watching them crawl before they cook. Delicious. Yep.
This one goes down as the tastiest food on the list. Oh, my gosh.
Oh, my gosh. It's so good.
As we wandered the streets of Istanbul, we passed by several small street stalls that were roasting delicious smelling meat on a spit with really long lines and usually super long lines of locals. Means that place is really good and you should eat there.
We have found a lot of delicious hidden gems that way.
I just said two. I don't know what it is. We ordered the sandwiches and division devoured them without ever knowing exactly what we were eating. And it wasn't until we posted the video on Instagram that we realized that we had just eaten an intestine sandwich. Lamb intestines. We had no clue.
We did know that we were eating lamb because the guy, Bob, for you.
It'S just chopped up veggies with some meat. What is lamb?
Lamb. Lamb.
It's lamb.
Looks great. Thank you. And that really just goes to show how much your mindset affects your attitude towards the food. Like, if he would have said, these are lamb intestines, try, I would have been like, okay. And I would have tried it to be nice and I probably would have been like, it's okay.
But instead you were like, this is the best sandwich I've ever put in my mouth.
Ate the whole thing and totally loved it. And then I would check my Instagram and everyone was like, that's a nice intestines. I was like, all right. That is fantastic.
Almost four years after eating bugs on the street in Cambodia, we found ourselves at a night market in Thailand presented with another opportunity to give bugs a try. This is called a horse shoe crab. It honestly looks like a big roach. You know, you're outside of most people's comfort zone when you have an audience gathering around watching you Eat something.
There's stuff inside of that one.
That one guy ate the rest of that.
We did. We sucked some people in that time.
Push them out of their comfort zone. You're welcome.
In the US we consider guinea pigs pets, but in Peru, they are food. But it's just like how we consider chickens food here.
We're pigs.
We're cows, fish, lambs, opossums. We were in Peru with Nate's parents for several weeks, and we had the chance to try guinea pig twice. The first time, we had it at a restaurant, and it was super gamey and kind of tasted like what I would expect a rat to taste like. Not exactly chicken. It's got a little different flavor to it than that. But the second time, it was cooked underground the traditional way, and it was much better.
This is stunk up the car. Going back to Iceland, they have a traditional dish known as fermented shark that was created out of necessity. We bought this yesterday, and it's been sitting out on the porch because it stunk up the entire apartment. The shark meat is fermented and then hung out to dry for months until it's ready to eat. When you smell fermented shark, it. It doesn't seem like something you should put in your body. I thought it was gonna smell like rotten fish. It smells like ammonia, so it feels like you're about to eat a cleaning product.
Imagine the stuff you sprinkle on throw up. That's what I meant. Oh, gosh. Kayla.
I'm not gonna say it tasted good, but it definitely tastes better than it smells.
Oh, it's not as bad as you think. No, no, no.
It's getting there.
Just because we are accepting of what other cultures enjoy eating does not mean that we have to enjoy it ourselves.
That's a good way to put it.
This was early, though, so the reaction. Still.
Dramatic, personal.
Don't let it get there. It's burning.
It did burn, though.
I so wish that you could smell through the camera right now.
Last time. But not least to this day, this is our least favorite food we've ever tried. The first time we tried stinky tofu was once again at the very beginning of our travels in Taiwan, and I'm a little embarrassed of my reaction. We got it.
Here we go. Drawing stinky tofu.
I think I have cat pee in my mouth.
Feel free to judge.
I deserve any mean comments.
It doesn't go away. But three years later, we decided to give it another try at an Asian street food market in Vancouver with a friend, and it was just as bad as we remember.
When you bite into it.
Okay, I don't like it.
The juices are coming down.
It's in my nose. I really thought it wouldn't be as bad. Like think about all the things that we ate.
I thought we had expanded our palates.
Four years later, it was just as bad.
It's just not our thing.
I can't eat anymore. Alright. And that does it for the strangest foods that we have tried during our 100 country journey. And surprisingly, we've only been sick to our stomachs a handful of times. And it was never because of the foods on this list. Keeping an open mind and an open palate has enriched our travels so much and in so many cases has brought us closer to the locals. And we have eaten. I truly believe we've had some of the best food that this world has to offer.
But I remember this for better or for worse. These are the memorable ones. That's honestly one of the most rewarding parts of travel. You can't help but become more open minded when you're exposed to new people and new cultures. Whether it be with food or just your general outlook on life and people.
And this may be a little deep for the ending of a food video, but we truly believe that the world would be a much kinder and more understanding place if more people took the time to travel and try to understand other cultures.
It's true.
Doesn't mean you have to like it.
I don't like that.
This is gross.
Australians. I can't follow it.
I have.
That was. That's four years ago.
Like cage diving with great white work.
Great white sharks.
Great white sharks. I've been in Tennessee too long. I don't even think that was Tennessee. I don't know what that was like.
And then. Yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. No. Yes. Great.
Watch hard.
I do think we embellished for the video to make more exciting content to watch.
Yeah. You didn't actually fall over because you couldn't handle the sentiment.
That's what I was trying to say. We don't have any butter.
Okay. Don't get mad.
If you're from Australia, don't patronize the Australians. We've hurt them enough.
It's yeast extract.
I do think it has with salt some health benefits. Which is better than salt.
B1, B2, B3. I feel like that's like the American cereal that's trying to make us think that we all need to eat breakfast. It's not bad.
It's not bad. Thank you, Damian. For sending it all the way from Australia. And for the coffee and the chocolate. So many nice people in the world. Do I have any Vegemite in my teeth?
No.
