A couple days ago Chris asked me if I was busy Saturday. Then he and Erin suprised me and Dave with tickets to Six Taste’s Bizarre Food Challenge, a culinary tour across strange foods from China. Our friends know us well. This was the first time Six Taste was doing the tour, and it was limited to ten people. Me and Dave showed up bright and early to Focus Plaza in the San Gabriel Valley.

Started the day off with a chocolate energy drink, and the Super Lion drink, both from Malaysia. The chocolate drink just tasted like those nestle  hot chocolate packets, way watered down, with Vitamin B added. The Lion drink tasted like Redbull and Smarties.

Century Eggs were first on the list of weird foods. While they looked horrific, they tasted pretty good.  They’re eggs fermented in clay and lime for several weeks. These were purchased at Ranch 99.

First stop: Shufeng Garden. Pig Ears in Chili. Not a fan of spicy foods. Pig Ears are crunchy, and the stripes reminded me of bacon. They just tasted hot though. Not scary.

Jellyfish Heads. I’ve had Jellyfish before; they have a snapping popping texture. I really hate onions, so for me it was much harder to finish the onions on my plate than the Jellyfish.

The event became an actual challenge when we went to a place called Ay-Chung and were brought the Stinky Tofu. It reeks. It smells like a cheese gone wrong, and a bit like sewage. The smell makes you gag and you can smell it a block away. Once you get past the smell (and cover it in soy sauce and chili), it just tastes like fried tofu. But then the smell creeps up your throat and you gag some more.

I was kinda joking to people that we’d eat turtle soup. But then I saw it on the menu at Nature Pagoda and my heart sank. I have a pet turtle, and it’s one of the animals that I didn’t really want to eat. They didn’t tell us what the soups were until after we ate them. And this was at an herbal medicinal soup place. The one on the right was turtle, and it’s good for girls on their period. The one on the right was crocodile, and it’s good for coughs. I’d actually eat crocodile; I really liked the broth and the meat (even though it had tons of tiny bones). And honestly.. turtle tasted really good. I just felt really guilty about it.

So. We took turns trying to guess what the squishy, strongly herbally thing we just ate was.. and we convinced ourselves that it was balls. Close.. ox penis. Ughhhhhhh. At least nobody liked it.

Next up were sea snails. I really liked these. They were really salty, but difficult to extract from the shells. The shells looked cool though. This was at Happy Kitchen.

Dessert.. a sundae topped with frog ovaries. There was black rice at the bottom. It was cold and refreshing, and not really that bad. One dude in our group got a ton of it to go cuz he liked it so much. This was at a place called Tasty.

Yay we did it! Actually everyone in our group did. About half had eaten really weird stuff before, including a girl who’s had tarantula. While I kinda wish there were insects on the menu, there definitely were foods I probably wouldn’t come across easily. If you’re into food challenges, I totally recommend this event. Thanks for the bday present, Chris and Erin! This might be the craziest food day ever. There are more pics on my flickr account.

Washed down the frog ovaries and the cock with some strawberries 🙂