As a Dutch person I have been raised in a way that you always should eat the food that people serve you. Besides that I am not that picky. So the result is that I have eaten some stuff that maybe some people would call weird. Here a list of the stuff I have eaten so far. I hope this list can get bigger in the future:
1. Guinea Pig
In Peru I had this delicious animal. Alpaca is something what you can eat everywhere in Peru. However guinea pig was a festive welcome meal in an aboriginal mountain village, Patacancha. The fur was still around the meat, and some people of our group refused to eat it. I am sorry that I am not such a pet friendly person. But I can tell you it tastes a bit like chicken, however with less meat on the bones.
2. Rat
A lot of times you meet amazing friendly people. In Ghana I had a friend living on the route to my work, he invited me so many times for dinner. Once we had rat stew. You could still see the tail in the pot, but the meat was delicious. Because it was a stew, it was soft and juicy. Tasteful!
3. Snake soup
Some friends invited me over to go to Huaxi Street Night Market (華西街觀光夜市). One of the best and few places where you can eat snake in Taiwan. In the past locals ate snake as well, but nowadays this is really a touristy thing. We had snake soup, with pieces of snake inside. Snake itself tastes as a combination of fish and chicken. Quite nice but has nothing on the bones. And then we had snake blood, bile, venom, urine and oil. Interesting mix of drinks, and it wasn’t disgusting at all. Couldn’t say those are the perfect drinks, but it was alright.
4. Deep fried bees
In Wulai (烏來), a place near Taipei, there is a restaurant where you can eat deep fried bees. There are still some aboriginal people here that eat this as a high quality cuisine. I must admit it is quite nice. The sauce on the crispy bees, together with spring onion and chilli makes this as a very nice meal.
5. Balut
When I tell people I had this, people start to look weird at me. This is a very normal thing to eat in the Philippines in some areas and people really love it. I discovered a woman selling it, off the beaten track, near a school. Balut is a developing bird embryo that is boiled and eaten from the shell. The best time to eat it is when the egg is 18 days old. The taste is quite strange. It tastes like a normal boiled egg but with something harder inside that tastes slightly different. Definitely an experience when you are in the Philippines.
6. One day old Chick
A very popular street food snack in the Philippines. It is very cheap and everyone can afford it. It is literally a one day old chick. They batter fried it and dip it in vinegar afterwards. You can eat the whole chick. Only the bones in the feet were too well developed so those where too hard to eat. But besides that you can eat the whole chick.
7. Scorpions and silkworm cocoons
I tried both of them at Donghuamen Night Market (北京东华门夜市). Because both are deep fried it is just crispy. To be honest, because of this it is quite boring to eat as well. The deep fried bees in Taiwan were prepared nicely with flavour. This is just something that is fried for a long time and has no taste. So totally safe to eat, but don’t expect too much.
