There’s plenty of amazing food to celebrate all over the world and we often tend to gravitate to the best of every cuisine. But where there’s a best, there’s also a worst and according to the online food portal Taste Atlas, there are a few dishes that the world collectively has decided deserve to be recognised for all the wrong reasons. Recently they released a crowd-sourced list of the 100 Worst Rated Dishes In The World and the comments were full of people with polarising opinions on which dishes deserved to be mentioned.
Leading the charge at number one is Hakarl from Iceland. It’s made from cured shark flesh, specifically from Greenland sharks and other sleeper sharks. The meat undergoes a three-month fermentation process, followed by hanging and drying for an additional four to five months. This is thought to be the ultimate acquired taste as the fermented seafood is incredibly pungent although the taste itself when served with a shot of a local spirit known as brennivin is supposed to be much more tolerable than its odour suggests. However, given its placement at number one, it seems like many people disagreed.
The second spot was taken by an unlikely contender, the Ramen Burger which was created in 2013 in Brooklyn, New York. Featuring buns made out of ramen noodles filled with a meat patty, it’s often regarded as an unnecessary fusion dish. Third up was Yerushalmi kugel, a Jewish casserole featuring delicately cooked noodles enveloped in caramelised sugar. Somewhere between sweet and savoury, this dish is often seen on Jewish holidays like Shabbat or Yom Kippur.
These were followed by Swedish Kalvsylta (jellied veal), Latvian Sklandrausis (a rye based carrot and potato pie), Chapalele (a potato bread) from Chile, Swedish Calskrove (a calzone pizza that is stuffed with hamburgers), Bocadillo de carne de caballo a Spanish sandwich historically made with horse meat, Marmite and chip sandwiches from New Zealand, and Ryynimakkara, a Finnish sausage made with oats and fat. This rounded off the top ten, but there were plenty more spots to fill.
India made the list (although this might have been the one time we didn’t want to) on the second half of the list at the 60th spot. And the dish that deserved to be named among the best of the worst? The humble Aloo Baigan. Granted, there’s a large contingent of Indians who have residual hatred towards baingan thanks to childhood memories of being force-fed a naturally squishy vegetable, but it seems like a harsh critique of what is for some, a nostalgic home-style favourite.
Though the comment section is full of divided opinions on which dishes deserve to be there, it did provide an interesting insight into how the world eats and some dishes that we otherwise may never get to hear about.