Bizarre Foods Indeed!

Bizarre Foods Indeed!
by Martell

There's a lot of Food Network on our TV at home. To those of you who know my wife, this should come as no surprise. Recently, though, she seems to have grown somewhat bored with Emeril and Rachael Ray, so much so that she has now ventured over to the Travel Channel. Of course, she only does so when there is food programming on, but hey, I would expect no less!

I've never really watched the Travel Channel, but this past week my wife found a show called "World's Best—Bizarre Foods: Asia." Some of the stuff on the show wasn't all that bizarre, it was just rare—stuff like kobe beef and blowfish. But for the most part, this show just completely blew my mind. Let me take you through a little bit of it...

The show opens in Tokyo. "Great," I think to myself, "They're probably going to go to a sushi bar and show uni and fish eggs. No problem." Um, actually...problem. The first place the host visits I believe is called a "getamono" bar. Though I cannot find this word in the Japanese/English dictionary, the host says it translates to "grotesque foods." Fantastic. The particular name of this establishment is called The Asadachi, which I was able to find in the dictionary. Just as he said, it indeed translates to "morning erection." What kind of freaking restaurant was this? We were about to find out.

The first dish was some reddish meat, which the chef cut into bite-sized pieces and dumped into a soup, along with some egg and vegetables. The host informs us, as he pops a bite into his mouth, that "pig testicle soup" is quite popular here. Well, that got my attention! It was now pretty clear what type of show this was going to be. I strapped on my seatbelt.

After that, the host is allowed to meet the next course. It is a live frog, and a pretty good-sized one at that. Before I can look away, the chef is skinning the frog. While it is still alive. We don't actually see any incisions, but he must have made one along the bottom of the frog. What we do see is the chef pulling the skin off in one piece. Imagine someone taking off a latex glove, such that it would end up inside-out. He did it just like that.

When I finally got the courage to look back at the screen, I see a pair of chopsticks holding a red piece of meat, a little bit smaller than a thumb. I compare it to a thumb because it is also flexing up and down, as if there were a joint in the middle. We are informed that this is the still-beating heart of the frog.

Have you ever been on the ride Freefall? For me, the scariest part of the ride is not the drop itself, but the three seconds or so at the top of the ride. It gives you just enough time to think, "What in the hell am I doing up here?" Much in the same way, the show's producers showed us this frog heart in the chopsticks just long enough for one to think, "Oh no! He's going to eat it!" Which, of course, he does. My wife and I were both completely aghast. I may have even fainted, I'm not sure.

The next thing I see is our host being given his frog sashimi, presented on a bed of THE FROG'S OWN SKIN!!! Sure! Why not? Wouldn't want to let that thing go to waste! And as it turns out, they don't. Evidently, the next course is a soup made out of the frog carcass. We were not lucky enough to see this, though.

As if this weren't enough, our host is then given a six-inch tall glass of sake to wash down his meal. I don't really see the sake, though, because also in the glass is a nine-inch dead lizard. It's arranged to look like it's kind of resting it's arms on the lip of the glass and poking it's head out, like it's hanging out in a swimming pool or something. The host takes a sip of the sake, and seems disappointed when he comments that there "really isn't much lizard taste to it." I guess I would be disappointed too.

And that's just the first segment. We go on to other restaurants and other countries, where we see deer penis sake, a live turtle dinner (which includes an opening course of sake, turtle blood, and one internal organ dropped into the drink), grilled bat, and bird's nest soup (ingredients: swallow's nest (uncleaned) and frog ovaries ("texture like skinned grapes")).

This show was absolutely unbelievable. Even now, I still can't believe it. It was so amazing that, even though I was out of town at the time, I had my brother drive 30 miles to my house to set my recorder, so I could tape the next showing of it that night. And now that I've watched it again, I'm still in shock.

I cannot do it justice, but I would like to share four of my favorite quotes from the show:

1. "There's really nothing like some good street frog."—This was actually said while in Bangkok at a Bizarro version of a farmer's market, not at the Morning Erection Restaurant in Tokyo.

2. "The best part of this soup are the little pieces of coagulated blood cake that they throw in there for a delightful taste treat." (pops one in his mouth) "That was one of the most (pause) unpleasant things I've eaten."—Now THAT says something!

3. "One of the finest testicular snacks in all of Tokyo."—This was in reference to the rooster testicle skewers the host and his friend got at a yakitori restaurant. And since he was pretty much an authority on the subject, I decided to take his word for it.

And possibly my favorite quote of the show:

4. "There are no paved roads, no electricity, no television. One thing they do have, however, is a passion for winged rodents."

Once again, I can only refer to this program as "unbelievable." There is so much more that I didn't even touch on, like the most amazing thing of all—the only food that completely grosses out the host is a Malaysian fruit called a durian, so much so that he actually spits it out of his mouth! Just think about this for a minute, along with everything else this man has eaten. Our man was taken down by a fruit! I guess all superheroes have their one area of vulnerability, though, and ours is the inability to eat a fruit that "tastes like completely rotten, mushy onions."

Martell can be reached at martell@babblog.com.