
The “Disgusting Food Museum” in Malmo, Sweden - petethomas
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/voraciously/wp/2018/10/09/this-new-food-museum-expects-to-upset-your-stomach-and-then-make-you-think-about-why/
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NikolaeVarius
I find it very surprising that balut made him vomit, it pretty much tastes
like a standard chicken/duck non-fertilized egg with a different texture. Not
that I necessarily enjoyed it, but with salt, its not terrible. Hakarl is bad,
but I barely think that counts, in the sense that I don't think it was EVER
meant to taste pleasing. I find any foods containing extremely high levels of
ammonia to be generally off putting, but maybe in the future that flavor
profile will be like hops in beer today and hipsters will chase after it and
put it in everything. /shrug.

Also from another angle, if the point of the museum is to remove the
"otherization" aspect from food, why even call it the "disgusting food"?
Obviously anyone who connotates the exhibit with the items inside will be
going in with a specific bias.

My personal thoughts are that a majority of "disgusting" items are generally
grouped into categories broadly being: fermented, processed (sausages/spam),
organ meat, or "creatively made" (ortolan, casu marzu). Just call it a food
museum and subdivide it by the above categories, and remove the dumb culture
differentiation.

The very article that they reference with Anthony Bourdain has a part that
criticizes the notion of overly closely tying a food to a specific
nation/culture. If you want to get rid of these sorts of biases, don't even
bother tying the item to an identity, just show it and make it "normal"
seeming.

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justtopost
It tends to be Texture, rather than Taste that makes most peope hate some
foods.

I disagree however with seeking to divorce the food with the culture. The
amount of understanding between cultures by sharing food is huge. Food implies
100s of things about the person and the community that produced it. I agree
that we shouln't over-emphasize the strageness of it, but many have borderline
fetish for the new, unusual, exotic. That human nature will always bring
styles and tastes together, while preserving a positive group identity. We
are, for better or worse, wired for tribalism. I think embracing that nature
and optimising for it seems better than pretending its not there.

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kup0
After watching a few videos of people trying surströmming, I figured they
might feature it in the museum, and sure enough.

It's interesting to me that foods like that, that have an incredibly
pungent/aggressive smell or presence are just naturally enjoyed by others.

I guess my brain still wants to believe that when something is that "bad" that
everyone else will experience the same thing, though that's clearly not true.

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robin_reala
I was in Slagthuset the other day, it’s a surprisingly lovely building on the
inside and well suited to a museum display. Not sure I’ll be visiting this one
though.

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eafkuor
I have to disagree on the rotten shark, it really isn't that bad. It's not
(even close to) good or anything, but it's not absolutely horrid either. Tried
here: [http://islenskibarinn.is/net/](http://islenskibarinn.is/net/)

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chris_wot
This guy created the museum of failure. I really hope he consulted Stephen
Pile, who wrote _The Book of Heroic Failures_ (possibly the funniest book of
all time).

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INTPenis
Here's a link[1] without paywall.

I'm from Malmö and I just learned about this thing through HN.

1\. [https://www.thelocal.se/20180926/disgusting-food-museum-
to-o...](https://www.thelocal.se/20180926/disgusting-food-museum-to-open-in-
malm)

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jamesholden
Even with the 'facebook redirect' trick.. the paywall prevents me from viewing
this article. -_-

