DailyDirt: The Next Big Food Is… Weird
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Food fads are fascinating, especially when they turn previously disgusting biological curiosities into expensive delicacies. Lobsters were once only served to prisoners and lowly servants, but now these crustaceans are highly-priced entrees. Casu marzu is a traditional Italian cheese that contains live insect larvae (with an aftertaste that can reportedly last several hours). The maggots can jump about 6 inches, so diners should be careful to block these bugs from jumping into their mouths if they don’t want to eat them. Casu marzu has a questionable legal status (for health and safety reasons), but it’s sometimes available on the black market for a hefty markup in price. Here are just a few other menu items that might (or might not) be appetizing to you.
- Civet poop coffee is a delicacy, and you really need to know that your coffee beans have been partially digested by a civet cat from Indonesia. So if you’re wondering if your coffee is fake, there’s a test that can verify the flavor components of real Kopi Luwak. [url]
- Whelks can refer to any number of unrelated shellfish, but the commonly eaten ones are a particular kind of sea snail of the species Buccinum undatum. Whelks could become the next oyster in the seafood industry, or they could just remain unappetizing snotwinkles, as they’re called in Canada. [url]
- In the early 1900s, the US faced “the meat question” — a crisis over whether or not meat production could match the growing demand for meat products in the US. A seriously debated solution involved importing African hippos to the US — in the same way that cows, pigs, sheep and poultry were introduced to the Americas — and trying to convince Americans to eat hippopotamus meat. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: coffee, delicacies, edible, fads, food, hippopotamus, kopi luwak, meat, seafood, shellfish, whelks
Comments on “DailyDirt: The Next Big Food Is… Weird”
How desperate for coffee must someone have been to even consider using beans that a cat pooped out?
And if you can’t tell whether you have genuine cat poop coffee without a test… why not just get regular coffee instead?
Re: Re:
The more salient question is how affluent must someone be?
http://world.time.com/2013/10/02/the-worlds-most-expensive-coffee-is-a-cruel-cynical-scam/
Extract: “In the past 10 years, kopi luwak has won the hearts ? and wallets ? of global consumers. A cup sells for $30 to $100 in New York City and London, while 1 kg of roasted beans can fetch as much as $130 in Indonesia and five times more overseas. The ultimate in caffeine bling is civet coffee packed in a Britannia-silver and 24-carat gold-plated bag, sold at the British department store Harrods for over $10,000. The justification for these exorbitant prices? A claim that kopi luwak is sourced from wild animals and that only 500 kg of it is collected annually. The claim is largely nonsense.”
Crazy rich folks.
Of Course I'll Have Your Whelk!
How do we do it? Volume!
Marinated snotwinkles? Bring 'em on!
Just the thing with a good lager.
At least, they’re not American, ahem, ‘cheese’.
Fish cum and horse penis are also liked by some…
And there is that thing with diamonds. They built an entire indurstry on price inflation, and they got rich