For some reason I’ve seen one episode of A Cook’s Tour too many times, but upon eating some undercooked iguana tamales, Tony Bourdain spurts out one of the best food repulsion lines I’ve ever heard:
“Unbelievably horrible. I just want to die.. I mean really bad. I want to dip my head into a bucket of lye, you know, pull my eyes out of their sockets and jump off a cliff.”
Food tasters (especially those not trained in the cuilinary arts) are always much too passive in their reactions. “The essence is not to my liking,” or “I don’t think the separate parts are tied together.” I just want them to cut the crap and say that they hate it.
overstated 
what’s a bucket of lye?
Lye (sodium hydroxide) is a caustic alkaline soda used to clean substances by corroding their surface. Canada has some good saftey precautions when dealing with lye:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?V32556213
It is weird, but I feel the same exact way about sea urchin. Even the eye sockets.
Best. Episode. Ever. I had tears streaming from my eyes for five minutes the first time I saw that. The real kicker is the counterpoint between what he says on-screen (“Hmmm. Tastes like chicken.”) and what the edited-in voice-over says (the quote above). Tony’s one of my personal heroes.
His books are great too.
I think my absolute favorite of his food repulsion lines may be this one from A Cook’s Tour (the book), talking about natto (fermented soybeans): “Given a choice between eating natto and digging up my old dog Pucci (dead thirty-five years) and making rillettes out of him? Sorry, Pucci.”
haha! I loved Kitchen Confidential, but I have yet to take a dive into A Cook’s Tour. There’s something about his honesty that makes you trust him.. odd how that works. He, more than anyone, makes me want to become a chef. It’s really the unglamourous way he presents things that make more like a game than a job.
Yeah, I had that “I wanna be a chef” compulsion too after reading Kitchen Confidential, but then I thought about it and realized that no, I probably didn’t really.
Incidentally, I just found out today that K5 owns five of the six Google results for the phrase “live nude hobbits” and the sixth is a reference to us. I’m more pleased by that than you’d believe.
And why can’t I post a link here?
not sure why that was turned off. it automagically turns url’s into anchor tags, which is why i never thought about html. god forbid someone should start posting raunchy images in my comments 😮
html test baybee!
ok, seems to work now.
A-hem. As I was saying, then, “live nude hobbits.”
And, as a special bonus, an offensive image!
Hello.This post was really interesting, particularly because I was searching for thoughts on this topic last Sunday. http://www.stupidaction.info/electronics/successful-ways-to-accomplish-better-outcomes-with-video-marketing/
excellent posting, i surely love this page, keep it.