Only Eww (And Eww Alone)

Cornish Stargazey Pie

Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool where we ask you a question, and in return for your answers — for use by us next week — we entertain you.

The question this week is, what is the worst food / meal you have ever eaten?

In my case it was Indian food, all of which use curries and taste like the corpses of …

Kidding!

India’s vastly diverse savory cuisines use many spice blends. There is a vast range of dishes those spices can create, each with a unique blend of spices, nuts and herbs, differing vastly in preparation and ingredients, and from state to state. The extraordinary diversity of Indian cuisine is intrinsically tied to memory, family and identity. (I took those lines directly from two of The Washington Post’s various panicked retractions of a humor column I wrote three years ago, and I am standing behind that entire 55-word snivel-fest verbatim, forevermore. I have saved it as a macro.)

The actual worst item of food I’ve ever eaten was not some odd or exotic dish that some people would eww at merely for what it is, such as calves brains or sea urchin testicles, or lamb pancreas. (I’ve had and enjoyed all three.)

Many people do subscribe to the eww philosophy. As I noted not long ago, Dave Barry is so revolted by the very concept of scallops that he once was on a yacht with an excellent private chef who served everyone seared scallops, and he secretly pitched his over the side.  He was mostly freaked to learn that scallops have eyes.  He wrote about this in “Lessons from Lucy.” I eat scallops raw, in sashimi.

In my case, the worst food item I’ve ever partially eaten was served up to me and David Simon by a restaurant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, about 25 years ago. We were there to research a movie we were writing, and after a day and a half of dreadful food, we decided to splurge and find the best restaurant in town. After several inquiries of strangers, a consensus was clear: A big restaurant near the Lackawanna River, a restaurant locally famous for its steaks. We each ordered a big steak, which arrived 15 minutes later and betrayed a mammoth Lackawanna on the part of the chefs and management.

It is hard to describe these steaks in a way that does them justice. They were grey, the color of a fully burned-through charcoal briquet. They had no seasoning and no juice. The gristle was not a bug, but a feature. The steak was essentially overcooked knots of gristle bound to each other by tendons and ligaments. A knife — I remember they gave us knives that looked like the kind Jim Bowie popularized, the ferocious type used for keeping his slaves at bay — the knives were unequal to the task of cutting this steak. It was like trying to cut a woven potholder with a knife. We each had one mouthful, then gave up. (Simon might have choked down a second.)

Rachel once consumed a quarter chicken so undercooked it was translucent pink. She ate it because she did not wish to insult her host. Now, I would have tactfully suggested more cooking, and then gotten a little less tactful if the answer was some adult version of “hey, clean your plate.” That is a difference between us. Rachel is Episcopalian, and all that entails behaviorally. I am Jewish, and likewise.

So tell us about your worst case. You don’t have to have finished the meal, or dish, but you need to have eaten some of it. Give us the circumstances. The funnier the better. And the more descriptive, the better.

Send your stories to our orange story button.

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And finally today’s Gene Pool Gene Polls. Somehow, I don’t believe I have ever asked this question in 30 years.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Because of an impending car trip, the Tuesday Gene Pool will arrive on Monday next week, and possibly earlier in the day than usual. The real-time portion should still begin at 11:30 a.m. or so. Unless I tell you otherwise.

See you then.