What is the grossest thing you ever ate?

Now with new grossest food

To celebrate our third country (fourth, including Canada from a previous trip), Dennis and I visit a restaurant, like a cement bunker with one wall open to the war zone on the street: backfires of vehicles, screams of vendors, catcalls and whispers. We’re in a border town that preys on wealthy Mexicans and naïve tourists, and caters to the vices of less scrupulous people. The furniture in the bar is decrepit plastic and wood. The walls are urine yellow, and the cracks are papered with posters and calendars that advertise vices with other vices.

We meet Felipe and Umberto, and they’re quick to treat us to a cold drink. The sugar swims unimpeded through my depleted bloodstream and steeps my brain in giddiness. While enjoying our cold beverages (ice cubes have become a luxury item), an 18-inch rat runs sideways up the wall and upside down across the ceiling along the rafters. I gasp, but Umberto laughs and pooh-poohs, “That’s a little rat.” 

Note: this conversation takes place in Spanish with informal sign language to help translation. I’ve learned Spanish by reading a book in my tent at night as I massage my aching legs to sleep. I figured Spanish would be easy compared to physics, but perhaps it’s the wrong side of my brain because I’m a dullard when it comes to anything requiring interpreting sounds. I speak Spanish like playing horseshoes and hand grenades, thinking close enough is good enough. For example, I generally ignore the masculine or feminine articles and nouns, which occasionally results in referring to myself as a pretty girl or telling a woman she looks fat when I’m speaking about myself. I also generally ignore the verb forms (there are over 100 different forms of the same verb, whereas regular English verbs have only one basic part, and you just glue on a different ending, e.g., talk, talks, talked, talking…) In Spanish, I use only the root verb (or whatever verb form I happen to know), so apparently, when I’ve been wanting something, I’ve been telling people that I love them in a local idiom. A translation of my trip to the market probably sounds something like: “I love you, my sweet apple. Thank you very much.”)

Umberto continues, “In Guatemala City, they eat rats. You must be careful.” Dennis and I express amazement. “Sí, sí. It is true. People will say it is the meat of the cow, but—” a mischievous smile cuts off his words momentarily— “it’s not the meat of the cow….” Umberto pauses and relishes our amazement as we hang on his words. “The truth—it is the meat of the dog.”

“Perro?” I say, unsure if I understand. (Dennis and I would notice fewer dogs in Guatemala than Mexico.) At that moment, a cute Shih Tzu, the family dog, walks through the restaurant, and I point and say, “Meat of the cow?”

Everyone laughs. “Sí. That is dinner. Are you hungry?” Felipe asks.

“No, no. I’m not hungry.”

“We had dog for lunch,” Dennis jokes.

“Burrito con carne de perro,” I say, practicing my Spanish.

Umberto continues to advise us of all the potential hazards and lists the disguised food: old horses, rabbits, cats, snakes, iguanas, lizards…

I’m reminded of strolling through a Mexican plaza sampling all the local foods with Dennis—our favorite thing to do at the end of eight hours of pedaling. We ordered some meat tacos. The word for meat often implies beef. Our tacos seemed slimy, undercooked, and tasteless compared to normal. Only after we walked to the front of the booth and saw the sign
“Tacos de cabeza” and the severed head lying on the bloody block with its skull cracked open, did we realize that we had eaten cow brain tacos. “You are what you eat,” Dennis said in his pragmatic way.

“Well, Umberto,” I ask the obvious question, “how do you know the difference between a dog and a cow?”

Umberto should have been an actor instead of a truck driver; after a dramatic pause and swoop of the hand, he touches his tongue, “Taste,” he says with a grin. 

Everyone in the restaurant laughs. Of course, by the time you taste a dog, it is too late to avoid eating a dog. 

Bicycling for eight hours per day not only requires huge amounts of raw energy but also extra nourishment to rebuild my broken body. I’ve eaten some strange things to satisfy my cravings for vitamins and minerals, like: rancid Yak butter tea, kangaroo steaks, impala legs, barbecued cactus, crocodile burgers, pig’s knees, chicken foot soup, goat ribcages, cow bone broth, chicken liver shish kebab, tongue omelets, octopus tentacles, eggs of various and unknown creatures…. The list is long. Unfortunately, I don’t know the names of most of the creatures I consumed because I couldn’t read or speak the languages. I simply pointed to items on the menu or in the cart and, for example, was rewarded with something looking like squid jerky that had been run over by a truck and dried in the sun. I also enjoyed testing my survival skills. I’ve harvested wild apples, berries, pomegranates, figs, et cetera. The caveman inside of me is proud to have claimed some fish. I extended my foraging to mussels that I gathered during low tide (those made my insides turn a little juicy). And I’ve spent considerable effort hunting Australian rabbits with a slingshot, but the closest I ever came to killing a rabbit was running one over with my bike. So far, I’ve declined hospitable offers to eat guinea pigs, hamsters, mice on a stick, chicken fetuses, and a freshly excised cobra heart beating in a glass of rice wine, turning it from white to pink with blood. While on the subject, I’d prefer not to eat pigs. They are like vacuum cleaners of human filth in the villages (and dogs to a lesser degree), which means the meat possibly contains many diseases and parasites, and since a human’s metabolism is very similar to that of a pig’s, these parasites would love to dine on me, too. (I believe the taboo against eating pigs, shellfish and dogs originated in ancient times, during less sanitary conditions without refrigeration, when eating undercooked meat resulted in a lot of illness and death.) Nor do I enjoy eating: ants, mosquitoes, flies, maggots and worms. I prefer to keep the bacteria (plus their toxic by-products) and parasites to a minimum, even if they have had the life cooked out of them. As a general rule, I don’t like to eat anything that moves, but once again, I’m sounding like a finicky eater. And, finally, for the record, I’ve accidentally and quite regularly ingested: smoke, fumes, oil, diesel, gasoline, ash, exhaust soot, mud, dust, dirt, sand, and pretty much anything else organic or inorganic that flies down the road. 

Thanks to Umberto, I have turned down various suspicious dishes, such as some “beef” tacos made out of a white meat, before the chef could hide it under some “sauce of the tomato”. However, considering I still didn’t know what a dog tasted like, I must have eaten a lot of dogs without knowing any better. 

Before I go any further, I should mention that I’m an animal lover extraordinaire—besides their being tasty—I fully respect an animal’s right to life, libert,y and the pursuit of happiness. It breaks my heart to think of some things I’ve seen, much less write about them. However, we live in a world where everything is food to something else—even you and me—and we all need to eat.

In vegetarian India, there was a wonderful variety of wildlife running around, including flocks of butterball peacocks. In contrast, from the seat of a bicycle, it was easy to deduce the Vietnamese, like Guatemalans, seemed to eat anything that moves, which sounds somewhat disparaging, though I think it has a lot to do with a culture of gourmet delicacies combined with overpopulation and diminishing resources. From an objective point of view, what’s worse about eating a dog than anything else? Contemplating that question too long might turn you into a vegetarian. For that matter, it’s best not to think about a plant’s right to life either. 

During a pit stop in Vietnam to refuel my bicycle—meaning me—I used my keen instincts to find lunch by honing in on the smell of roasting meat. Luckily, the women refused to serve me, communicating—by pointing to their pet dog—what was on the menu. In Vietnam, a male-bonding ritual involves eating thit cho (roast dog meat) during the end of the lunar month. Dining on dog—which gives a new meaning to puppy chow—is supposed to bring good luck during the beginning of the month and raise the libido.

Ordering food in Vietnam is very difficult. Once, without the help of a chalk menu to point at, I tried to order cơm or phở (rice or noodles). The waitress was bewildered as I kept repeating, “cơm phở,” using every tonal variation I could imagine, trying to get the singsong inflection right. “Aha!” she seemed to say and ran down the road. It is common for restaurateurs to buy ingredients only when they need them. She returned a few moments later—looking exceptionally proud—with a box of laundry soap. 

During another visit to a Vietnamese roadside restaurant, the hostess wasn’t inclined to be informative or helpful with my laundry. When I was served my dish, despite having taken precautions, I was suspicious. It was a white meat similar to pork but sweeter and tenderer. Afterwards, outside the restaurant, when I saw the sign, “Thit Cho,” I realized I had just eaten barbecued dog, and probably a side dish of stray dog noodle soup. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive any good luck. In fact, fourteen kilometers later, I snapped my chain and ripped my front derailleur in half, after which I had to switch gears with my foot all the way to Australia.

I wonder how dogs lost their dignified status as man’s best friend? Dogs, one of the first domesticated animals, were originally wolves, cajoled out of the wilds for a few scraps of leftovers in exchange for keeping guard outside the cave, a symbiotic arrangement that would last tens of thousands of years. However, the average Third World dog is a mongrel. (For the record, the more politically correct term is Underdeveloped World, according to the Human Development Index, which I find even more insulting; villages are often much more civilized than cities.) All the adaptations for beauty, running or hunting have been mixed into nothing; what remains is the lowest common denominator dog able to survive in the corner of humanity’s eye. It is an average-sized dog with motley, short, brown hair, a slender body, rat-like snout, pointy teeth and ears, and a stiff tail. As cute pups, they’re coddled, but as adults, they’re teased, beaten and stoned, probably because locals don’t want their mangy fur or rabid teeth anywhere near them. Third World dogs, aching to be loved once again rather than return to the wilds, must fend for themselves on the dregs of humanity. This is the average Laotian stray dog that I personally witnessed being harvested and sold to the Vietnamese—and I have to admit, they don’t taste bad, a lot like sweet chicken, a little tough and wormy, but better than the average, unhappy, industrially-grown chicken pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. Unfortunately, the roadside chefs often fail to execute their dishes without a smoggy taste and sprinkling of sand and peppering of flies.

The Third World mongrel is quite a contrast to the pampered pets of the West, like California, where cats are fed vegan diets, and dogs have personal dieticians, masseurs and psychologists. An acquaintance of mine teaches “doga” (dog yoga) and another does crystal energy healing for pets. I think Californian dogs would make wonderful delicacies. How about a gourmet Chicago-style wiener dog? Or Saint Bernard chops marinated in whiskey? Or spicy Chihuahua kebabs?

I’m being facetious to make a point: I wish the human beings of the world were treated with as much respect as a Californian dog. I would never eat one. It’s too much like a friend. In fact, I don’t think I could ever eat anything that I knew on a personal basis. The thought of eating my pet parakeet horrifies me. In fact, I’m afraid to name my vegetables.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t feel one bit bad about eating a hillbilly dog. Those dogs are bred to kill bicyclists. I remember riding through the Appalachian Mountains. When one dog saw me coming, he howled to his neighbor dog, and so on, until the whole valley was a howling dog gauntlet. Most of the time they went for my front wheel, instinctively attacking my most vulnerable spot, and sometimes they’ve herded me into the opposite lane where I was nearly run over by a hillbilly truck. If it weren’t for my squirt gun full of flea spray, I would have surely been eaten by a pack of hillbilly dogs. 

I wonder, “Do I taste like chicken?”

Update — A new grossest food

I thought my world travels had prepared me for the challenge of eating a tarantula. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was by far the worst thing I have ever eaten. It was terribly bitter, like it was still filled with poison. And it’s dry, furry body got stuck in my throat. Afterwards, even a beer and three shots of tequila didn’t wash the taste out of my mouth. It ruined my birthday dinner and came back to haunt me the next morning.

You can watch the whole thing in this video below starting at minute 1:12.