There are so many different traditions and cultures in the world, especially when it comes to food. It’s no wonder sometimes we’re surprised (not always pleasantly) when we travel to a different country or someone’s home and taste food that we might not usually get to eat. Some regions like it more spicy and rich, while others prefer foods that are creamy and delicate, so it might be quite a shock to go to a country or family with a completely different food menu than you are used to.
This online user wondered whether anyone has ever experienced eating something just out of politeness to not hurt someone’s feelings – either while they were visiting another country or someone at home. These users delivered interesting, funny, and enlightening answers.
#1
Fish.
I was in 10th grade and had been vegetarian for a few years at that point. A friend invited me over for dinner, she had moved here from Syria and her mom was really excited she was bringing an American friend over, so the mom made a really big, nice dinner for us all. But she didn’t really know what vegetarian was and spoke broken English. She’s made this really lovely baked fish dish and a bunch of sides, since fish isn’t meat.
My friend was embarrassed, but I ate the whole meal because the mom tried really hard and made such a special meal in my honor.
I’m still proud of how mature I was in that moment at such a selfish age.
Image source: SnooRobots8049, Sebastian Coman Photography
#2
My gfs grandmother is a very sweet old lady with dementia and diabetes.
She loves to cook and we eat lunch at her apartment every sunday.
She always has something for dessert but since she is diabetic she doesn’t eat it herself. Sometimes she has bought ice-cream or candy but usually she makes something herself.
One time she was very proud because she had made something that isn’t from our country; she had made frozen cheesecake.
She was actually extra proud because she had used three different kinds of cream cheese.
But since she’s diabetic she hadn’t tried it; if she had tried it she would maybe have noticed that since she didn’t add any sugar to the cream cheese it had a lot of big ice crystals. She would also have noticed that the three different kinds of cream cheese she used was regular, garlic and chives, and grilled pepper.
So there I was, smiling politely, eating icy cream cheese with garlic, chives, grilled peppers, and a bunch of different crushed cookies.
I always smile when I think of that haha
Image source: coeurdelejon, Aneta Voborilova
#3
I used to hate bell peppers. I mean I used to say if they were even in the kitchen I could taste them in food. I despised just the smallest amount of them.
One day I was at my brothers house and my sister in law invited me to stay for dinner. Then she said she was making pepper steak. Oh, no.
I figured I’d eat the steak and rearrange the peppers around the plate. Nope. She cut them into quarters. No way to politely do it. Just eat it and smile.
I took a bite and it was nasty. Next bite wasn’t as bad. I s**t you not, by the end of my dinner I was beginning to like them!!!
I’ve been eating them since. I grow them, I eat them raw, I eat them cooked. Amazing.
Image source: gitarzan
#4
I was ten and went to a family friends house for dinner. They served fried chicken livers and gizzards. Liver was okay but couldn’t chew the gizzards. Stuck them in my pants pocket. Mom saw them floating in the washing machine. Thought that the cat had crapped in the washing machine.
Image source: WallyZona, Wikipedia
#5
My first serious boyfriend brought me to meet his family and I reallllyyyy wanted to make a good impression. Everything seemed to be going well until dinner was served. I think (though no idea) that it was an attempt at bouillabaisse? It was cold fish soup. With fish scales attached to skin, uncleaned seafood, raw rice at the bottom and, forsaking all gods, an oily residue on top.
I managed to choke enough down to be polite. I couldn’t stop gagging for days, though. His mother’s cooking did not improve, either.
Image source: Lulu_42, Bao Menglong
#6
A very bizarre soup that my MIL concocted that belonged in r/ididnthaveeggs. Granted, I was forewarned that she is a terrible cook. I just didn’t expect it to be THAT terrible
She replaced almost every single ingredient in the original recipe with something completely different. Except for water. The most offensive substitution was raisins to replace capers
I ate a very small portion out of politeness and it was one of the most revolting things I’ve ever eaten (and I’ve eaten sea cucumber)
… and that’s also sort of how we found out she has dementia
Image source: Duochan_Maxwell, Melissa Walker Horn
#7
at 8 years old my fancy uncle took me to Le Cirque a famous NYC restaurant and had us all order the 12 course tasting menu. It was a lot of new very rich foods (lobster, pigeon, foie, a swanky as f**k dessert cart etc).
I woke up at 2 in the morning and puked it up. My regards to the chef because it tasted good in and out.
Image source: pushaper
#8
An entire goat brain.
I had never tried brain before, and a coworker had just cooked an entire goat. I told her I would eat some brain if she brought it to work the next day. I was expecting maybe a few little pieces, but no, she brought the whole thing plus the tongue. The tongue was excellent, and I had eaten countless lengua tacos at that point in my life. The brain was not good, but not *terrible*. It just tasted “gray” and soft if that makes any sense. Stubborn old me had to make a point and eat the entire thing. Needless to say, I probably won’t be eating any more brain unless for some reason I can be tricked into it.
Image source: GoatLegRedux
#9
My host mother made fish one night. Two bites in, my roommate (another foreigner) and I exchanged deadly looks. Both of us ate almost anything we were given, but this was something *else*.
The fish had the strangest, most distinct taste of bleach I’ve ever had. We were also nowhere near the coast. No one else in the family blinked an eye. My roommate and I ate as little as we could but kept up pretenses. I’m not sure if she cleaned it with cleaning fluid, but it was the most horrifying thing I’ve eaten for politeness.
The other one is Moroccan ker3in (pronounced kera’ain, the 3 is a ʕ sound) It’s primarily cow hoof/ cow knuckle that has been roasted to release the gelatin. So it’s a very sticky, very thick cow gelatin that gloms onto your fingernails (as you eat usually with your hands), and leaves you with beefy fingers for seemingly the rest of eternity (or until a very thorough scrubbing).
Image source: yestobrussels, Dana Tentis
#10
I was lucky enough to grow up with a mom who was a good cook. Nothing fancy, but everything was fresh and well seasoned. The first time I went to my boyfriend’s house for Sunday dinner I found out not everyone’s mom was handy in the kitchen. We had roast beef that his mom had put in a pan, covered it with water, stuck it in the oven and boiled it to the consistency of the bottom of my shoe. It was served with instant mashed potatoes made with water, not milk. Our beverage was lukewarm Carnation instant milk. I ate and drank it, but I hugged my mom tight when I got home. After that we mostly ate at my house, thank goodness.
Image source: Bitter_Comparison959, José Ignacio Pompé
#11
When I was in college, a friend invited me over to his house for dinner – he’d been raving about what an excellent cook his Turkish mother was for ages, and I enjoy Turkish cuisine.
The first course was a Yayla Corbasi, which is soup made with yogurt. I don’t know what she did to it, but it was completely curdled and absolutely revolting, both in terms of texture and taste.
I dutifully suffered through an entire bowl of it, thanked her kindly, and then white-knuckled my way through the next fifteen minutes before asking where the restroom was. I ran the faucet to cover the sound of my puking.
It took me ten years to consider another bowl of yayla corbasi, but I eventually made the leap and had a delightful bowl that didn’t make me sick to my stomach.
Image source: Neener216
#12
I was 16 eating dinner at my then boyfriend’s home with his parents. His dad reheated an ice cream pail full of frozen ham and bean soup, which would have been fine on its own. But then proceeded to puree broccoli, spinach, and some mystery fruit and veggies juice from the fridge that mostly tasted like mangos together and ADD IT TO THE SOUP. It tasted like grainy veggie slurry with some random hint of mango and was easily the most unpleasant meal or ever had.
His dad insisted I eat seconds, and I hindsight I’m convinced he was just f*****g with me.
Image source: clemonade17
#13
F**K YEAH I GOT STORIES! In 2016, I spent a month in Vietnam with my “homebase” being with a family in HCMC. After like 2 weeks of eating fish cakes, boiled chicken, and other regional delicacies, I was feeling a little homesick (I’m from New Orleans). One of the sons of the family I was staying with was about my age and had been to the US a few times so he went out of his way to get me “American” food. It was Pizza Hut. He arrived home and knocked on my bedroom door and walked in with a small personal pizza for me. I was so excited! And thankful! This was so kind he really didn’t have to go out of his way for me but he could tell I was sad. After he left I opened the box to find the Vietnamese version of pizza. It had shrimp, ham, clams…some weird cheese and sweet red sauce. And in Vietnam, they eat shrimp with the shells on. Soooo I ate the crust. It was really weird and not at all good but I wasn’t about to turn down such a thoughtful gift from my host family.
Vietnam, what is you doing to pizza?
Image source: OPisalady
#14
I used to live in Madagascar, where it’s really common for strangers to invite you into their home for a meal. I loved doing this because it was a great way to meet people but it also led to a fair amount of less than desirable meals. The first one, angivy (sorry, no idea in English), is the most bitter thing I have ever eaten. If you’ve ever chewed an aspirin tablet, imagine that flavor but mushy. The second, anamalao (Schezwan Button), makes your mouth go numb. So, I’m in the middle of nowhere pretty sure I’ve just been poisoned but I just kept eating it. And the third- important aside, I’ve been a vegetarian most of my life and haven’t had many kinds of seafood- a very kind woman gave me mashed cassava with tiny shrimp in it. I didn’t want to be rude and figured I could just eat around the shrimp. Once again, my entire mouth went numb. But this time my throat also burned as I swallowed. This is how I discovered I’m allergic to shrimp.
Image source: TrondroKely
#15
A friend’s mom made us burgers for lunch. She formed raw ground beef right out of the package into patties and stuck em in the microwave. Served on plain buns. Grey disgusting meat and plain bread. No toppings no chips/sides. That’s it. I ate it but I still think she was either trying to get me to leave or just had zero idea how to cook. It was awful.
Image source: atxbikenbus, Leonardo Luz
#16
The problem with this question is: I honestly don’t know what it was that I ate. I was visiting a friend in Dalian, China, which is like the capital of seafood (mainly for export to Japan). My host got invited and that means I was invited too to a dinner of a rich businessman retiring from his business in Hong Kong. I ate many seafood things that don’t even look like seafood things. Some were delicious, others horrible. Luckily there was some strong alcohol (drinking it made me rise quickly on the ladder of respect of the people present, but that’s another story). One of the things I ate looked like it had an eggyolk inside, which, of course, didn’t taste like egg at all. At one point I ate a shrimp-like thing, and my friend/host told me “Eh you should not eat the plasticlike thing inside it” but I already swallowed it. And if even the Chinese tell you to not eat something you ate, you know you’re in trouble. Heavy diarrhea the next days were my punishment.
Image source: Erycius
#17
Balut – boiled, fertilized duck egg embryo. In the shell.
Image source: chang3la
#18
Having dinner in the home of a local family while in Iran with about six other people. We were served homemade rose water which can be ok but this was very intense. The hosts left the room for a bit and the rest of the group refused to drink the rose water as they didn’t like it. This would have been such an insult to our hosts. So I had to quickly scull seven glasses of it. When the hosts returned they were so proud and honoured we liked it that they asked if we wanted more and started to pour – I shut it down immediately insisting we were saving ourselves for dinner but thank you so much. Ridiculous.
Image source: Sea_Yogurtcloset48
#19
A friend of my spouse, who I had always known to be a good cook, invited us over for a “special family recipe.” It’s easiest to write it as a recipe:
Boil 8 large potatoes in plain water until mashable. Mash them and spread in a casserole dish. In a separate pot, pour one bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s and turn on low heat. Dice 1 green bell pepper and add it to the sauce. Pour the sauce over the potatoes. Butterfly 8 hot dogs and put them on top of the sauce. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove. Makes 8 servings.
It was absolutely vile.
Image source: B0bs0nDugnuttEsq
#20
Gefilte fish… both my grandmother and my great aunt used to make it – to say it was awful is an understatement. Whenever we’d go over to either of their places when I was a kid (which was unfortunately often), it’d be there, on the dinner table, and I’d be forced to politely eat it while my mum would be giving me a very hard stare from across the table and silently mouthing the words “don’t you *dare* spit that out”
I know some people like it, I know it’s a cultural thing for a lot of folks… but I don’t care dammit, gefilte fish is one of the nastiest foods known to mankind. 100% don’t recommend.
Image source: EverlastingDandelion
#21
My husband put moldy butter on his pancakes AFTER I pointed out there was green mold in the container and growing on the butter. It wasn’t until he saw the black mold on the lid that he decided he had made a mistake. He didn’t want to hurt my mom’s feelings. My mom liked to keep her butter on the counter but would re-use the same container without cleaning it for weeks, maybe even months. I called it her science project.
Image source: ToastedMarshmellow
#22
I manage to fake it. My friend had never cooked a turkey before. It looked like the cover of a magazine with fruit all around it. But was pink. She said she cooked it a couple hours less than the directions said.
Cue me: sneaking out to the kitchen and microwaving my plate when she was distracted.
Image source: FormicaDinette33, Monstera
#23
Extremely salty stir-fry.
New roommate wanted to cook dinner for me, she was so happy she made something from scratch I didn’t want to crush her enthusiasm so I powered through and ate it drowning it in plum sauce. I found out later she used an entire bouillon cube for like 3 tbsp of liquid.
Image source: BuyTheBeanDip
#24
Handkase mit musik. It’s a regional dish in Hessen, Germany. Imagine a rancid cheese-flavoured neoprene hockey puck marinated in vinegar. It was like a tramp’s a**e Feta. 30 years later it still turns my stomach.
Image source: TimGJ1964
#25
I used to teach an English class for low literacy adults, most of whom were older folks from Bhutan. One day, one of my students offered me something that looked like an eraser and, without thinking, I accepted it. He then encouraged me to put this unrecognizable object in my mouth. It turns out it was chhurpi, which is a preserved cheese made of yak’s milk that’s popular in Nepal and Bhutan. It is as hard as a rock 🥲 I’m pretty open to new foods, but without any warning or context, it was pretty unpleasant.
Image source: ACatWithSocksOn
#26
Beef bile soup in Laos, definitely an acquired taste.
Image source: spaghettischolar, ENESFİLM
#27
I’m the chef at a high end private school in NYC. I took the job 13 years ago for the hours and time I’d have with family. Eventually, it became more about the kids and exposing them to foods they may never have tried on their own.
Anyway… every year it’s inevitable that one of the younger grades will bake something as a class project and I’ll be brought a plate or piece to eat. I know the banana bread is probably 10% boogers and that little Asher and Imogen didn’t wash their hands before they added the chocolate chips to the cookie dough.. but they always wait to see me take a bite.
So I choke it down, force a grin and an enthusiastic “So Yummy!” because when I do, they’re so happy they could s**t.. and because after all this time seeing their hyperactive little faces go all googly-eyed with glee makes me so happy that I could s**t. I love those little f*****s.. well, most of them.
TLDR, I eat grade school student’s classroom made baked goods which are sure to be full of boogers and poop particles cause I don’t want to break their hearts when I say, no thank you.
Image source: Asleep_Tangerine_831
#28
Not questionable really because I don’t have an issue with it, but we recently stayed with family in Bosnia who were feeding us delicious meal after delicious meal. Sujuk sausage featured heavily at breakfast time, along with another type called Kulen.
One morning after being asked what we preferred for breakfast, I said ‘damn if I had to choose, I think I like Sujuk way better than Kulen’
They replied ‘it’s because our Sujuk has a lot of horse meat in it!’
I still ate it every morning, they were correct, it made it extra delicious.
Another time in a village outside of Sapa, Vietnam I was starving and grabbed some mystery meat off a grill on the street. They weren’t able to tell me what meat it was. Definitely was not pork, beef, chicken or lamb. I don’t think I want to know.
Image source: whydidyouruinmypizza
#29
I finished working out at the Gym and my instructor and I went to eat a corn cob snack from some old man off the side of the road.
We ordered our cobs and before handing them to us, the old dude sneezes all over them. My instructor stares at me and goes “don’t be rude” and he starts eating it. I had a serious lapse in judgement and joined.
Yup. That experience changed my life and now I never do something I don’t wanna. Old man throat germs can change one’s life.
Image source: GooglyMoogly122, Ravi Sharma
#30
When my sister was little she wanted to make cupcakes for the family and she forgot to put sugar in. They tasted like unscented soap but we took some bites to make her feel better.
Image source: NGNSteveTheSamurai, Alisha Mishra
#31
I was in a small rural town for work and ended up meeting a man who invited me over to meet his wife. I went by on an afternoon with my coworkers, and she asked me if I’d like a piece of homemade cake.
Even though I’m choosy with food I buy, my mindset is that I’m always going to respect the food that people make for their friends and families. I’ve had things before that didn’t quite strike right the first time or were an acquired taste, but I considered those learning experiences.
The cake, though, was just pure sugar. She gave me a whopping slice and I literally couldn’t detect any other taste but sugar. I would have just nibbled and out it aside but the couple were both watching me closely and asked me repeatedly if it was okay each time I slowed. It was sooooo gross and I ate the whole thing.
Image source: augustrem
#32
A type of north African Aubergine salad, similar to baba ganoush made by my friends wife.
She had sliced aubergines lengthways in a baking pan with no oil or seasonings apart from salt, then covered the entire pan in ranch dressing and chopped up one Tomato to go over the top. She left the skins on the aubergines. It was like eating warm leather drenched in ranch, it was vile and I had 2 bites then never ate anything she cooked ever again.
Image source: ragandbonewoman
#33
A vegan cheesecake that tasted like half a bottle of Dawn was dumped in it. Literally NO idea how she got that flavor into it, unless she had soap on her utensils or pan.
Image source: kitty1__nn
#34
I dated a woman once that said she was an amazing cook.
The first time she cooked for me she put an unseasoned sirloin steak in the over for 30 minutes
Then she boiled a bag of frozen veg and a few potatoes
She served the well done steak, boiled veg and boiled potatoes with her choice of sauces, BBQ and ketchup
I wish I was making it up.
I ate it out of politeness, wasn’t a huge deal because I’m actually a good cook. We dated for a few more months and it fizzled our
Image source: jackedtradie, Valeria Boltneva
#35
Sea Cucumber.
I was in China and our host bought one for everyone at the table. I was told it was a delicacy and expensive. So I ate the whole thing, despite the disgusting taste and texture.
Image source: Cheese-Stands-Alone
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