Tasting Exotic Foods Around the World

I like to travel, and I like to eat. Thanks to the pervasiveness of video cameras, I’ve been able to channel my inner Bourdain quite a bit over the years. Here are my tastings from the past year, including from my trip to Seattle last week.

Fried Kool-Aid

At the Fillmore Jazz Festival in San Francisco. Didn’t have to travel very far for this!

Wild Berries

Last July, I went trolling for wild berries with my friend, Ed, up in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. We were definitely not experienced foragers, and we didn’t realize that tiny did not mean unripe (possibly missing out on the best strawberries ever as a result). Nevertheless, our search wasn’t entirely futile. First, we found a wild raspberry:

We later found tons of wild blueberries:

One of the recurring themes you’ll notice if you watch enough of these videos is that my commentary is often wrong. In this case, the blueberries absolutely were ripe; they were just miniscule.

Horse

My friends, Alex and Claudia, gave me a wonderful tour of Zurich when I was there a few months ago. During one of our many long conversations, they casually mentioned a funny story about some tourists who unintentionally ate horse at a nearby restaurant. “Horse?” I asked. “People eat horse here?” That predetermined our dinner destination for the evening:

It really does taste like beef… “but better,” as Alex would say. Alex’s commentary in this video is priceless. If you’re disturbed by the notion of eating horse, read these articles in GOOD, Slate, and the New York Times.

Shigoku Oysters

Tasting and providing commentary on Shigoku oysters at Taylor Shellfish Farms in Seattle:

These were wonderful — probably the best oysters I’ve ever tasted. Again, ignore what I said about plastic bags. They are indeed farmed in bags, but they are more permeable than plastic of course.

Geoduck

Also from Taylor in Seattle. I had actually eaten (and disliked) geoduck as a kid, but I had never had it so fresh, and certainly never raw: