is eaten whole and extremely hot (once considered a delicacy in
French cooking, eating ortolan is now illegal in the United States),
to hakarl, the beloved (and, according to Bourdain, utterly disgust-
ing) fermented shark of Iceland.
I’m not like that. I am pretty much the opposite. Plop me in
most any restaurant and my choices are pretty predictable. I’ve
even resorted, at times, to having my friends pick something for
me. “You won’t like that,” they’ll tell me if I consider ordering
something unusual off the menu. This isn’t new. I was a very
picky eater as a kid. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were
a staple in my lunchbox – so much so that my mom went on strike
by third grade and I had to make my own lunches. Out of what I can
only imagine as frustration, my family would drop me off at home
after church on Sunday afternoons while they went out to eat.
I imagined they saw this as a punishment, but for me making my
own PB&J – for dinner no less! – was the ultimate luxury. I scored
low on boredom susceptibility, so variety was a spice I used
sparingly.
Fast-forward some 30 years, and I’ve become a teeny bit
more adventurous about food. A few years ago I did an interview
with Kate Sweeney, a local NPR reporter, about people who are
fearless about food. She began by reading me what sounded like
a list for an exotic party: “Black coffee, brambleberry crisp, goat
cheese with red cherries, pad thai.” It wasn’t. These were the ice
cream flavors we’d be trying that day. The shop she took me to is
known for unusual and adventurous flavor combinations – not your
typical 31 flavors, but ones that challenge traditional ice cream
flavors. As a slightly more adventurous adult, trying a new flavor
is a fun experience for me, but it’s nothing like the flavors some of
the high sensation-seeking foodies I’ve met will try. For them, food
is an adventure in their mouths. They talk incessantly about food,
chase down food trucks, and photograph and blog about their
experiences. Some love food for the taste itself, or for the fads, or
how it brings people together. They seek sensations in bowls of
chicken hearts, goat brains, and pig blood stew, not because these
foods are part of their cultural norms, but because they’re there.
Munir, a former student of mine, reached out to me when
he heard I was researching fearless foodies. He couldn’t wait to tell
me about some of the things he’d tried. “I love frog legs and gator,”
he started. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had baby octopus – ”
I hadn’t.60 / Buzz!Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:18:13, subject to the Cambridge