The Sour Toe Cocktail
Let’s begin in the Yukon Territory, in the long-past-its-boom town of Dawson City.   The Downtown Hotel bar serves up a drink of straight whiskey, with added flavouring from a real life severed human toe.   A big, gnarly one too, shrivelled and yellow, with the nail still on.  I joined the Sour Toe Cocktail club, and to qualify, the toe must touch your lips.   I can still feel it today, like a pickled, phantom limb.  Everyone gets the same toe, and in the past, some toes have been swallowed. 

Balut
Duck can be delicious, and eggs can be delicious, so what happens when you mix the two together?   Balut, a popular delicacy in the Philippines, is a fertilized duck egg; that is an egg with a crunchy, sometimes feathery baby duck inside.   You peel the shell, slurp up the embryonic fluid, add some salt, and bite hard into the crispy mushy goodness.   Apparently, balut goes down really well with cold beer. 

Deep Fried Hairy Spiders
Personally, I just didn’t have the stomach for arachnoids when I was travelling by bus through Cambodia.   A popular roadside snack, the large spiders are eaten in big bites, or pulled apart, leg by leg, and consumed like French fries.  Black bug juice dribbles down the chin as you reach the best part of meal, the pincers and the bulbous back.   All the poison is removed when the spiders are fried, and apparently the appeal lies in its crunchy-chewy texture.   Along came a spider, and sat down beside her, and so Little Miss Muffet just ate the damn thing. 

Ox Penis Soup
Let us just be grateful that, due to conservation laws and human evolution, it’s no longer Tiger Penis Soup.   Some Chinese restaurants serve up this delicacy, known for its mythical and powerfully arousing properties.  The broth is serviceable, but the reality of eating ox or deer penis is that it tastes like a hard, impossibly chewy sponge.  Tourists wishing to partake in this dish may find themselves forced to spit it out, or swallow it whole.

Fermented Shark (Hákarl)
Moving over to Iceland now, where they like their sharks rotten, stinky, and air-dried out for 5 months. Hákarl is an acquired taste, even in Iceland. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay puked on it, a common reaction for first-timers, who are advised to hold their nose to avoid detecting the disgusting stench they’re about to put in their mouths. Those who eat it are associated with being strong and brave. As someone appalled by the shark fin trade, I reckon anyone who eats the fins of these increasingly endangered fish should be forced to try this Scandinavian delicacy first.

If you think you can handle some more, click here.  But don't say we didn't warn you.