Horror food

Readers of this blog often comment how adventurous I am. While it’s true that I like to push my culinary boundaries, I have my limits.

Just in case you think I recklessly eat every weird thing that comes my way, I thought I’d share a few horrors that are well down my ‘to eat’ list - such as this offering that I spotted this in a local Chinese cafe yesterday.  I suspect I may get around to trying it one day just for the hell of it.  

This product range really amuses me. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to design cheerful packaging that belies the horrors within. What’s even funnier is that it’s all labelled in English even though, apart from a few weirdos like me, most native English speakers would recoil at the thought of eating duck icky bits.



A foodie friend recently invited us over for dinner and, when I asked what he’d like us to bring, he replied “scare us”, so off I toddled to the shop selling the abovementioned duck bits.

Sauced, semi-dried duck tongue.

Given that he lived in Hong Kong for many years, and his wife is Hong Kong Chinese, I should have known better than to present them with this lame attempt at horror food.

They hoovered them up without a blink and offered to cook me some freshly prepared ones some day.

I’ve cheated a bit with this example, because I ended up eating a couple of the duck tongues. They’re ok.

Pig spine soup (spotted on the menu of a Korean restaurant in Queen Street).  As much as I admire this restaurant’s pragmatic honesty, I don’t like pork and the dish’s main ingredient is spine. What more can I say?

The other night I heard Kieran coughing and spluttering out in the kitchen, followed by the tap running hard. It transpired he’d gone to make vegemite toast and, in his rush to satisfy his hunger, had grabbed the first jar he saw with a yellow and red label. Poor lad; this sambal is seriously HOT.

The Chinese may have cornered the horror food market, but Stutz burger bar in Ohakune is giving them a run for their money.

My husband and kids reckoned their burgers are the worst they’ve ever tried. As for Stutz’s garlic chips, even my greaseaholic family was flummoxed by this soggy garlic butter topped nightmare.

They offered me some, and I was tempted to kill off my arteries and try them just so I could regale you with how ghastly they were. But my nerves failed and I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it.