more food

[calimac]

Mark Evanier can't think of any food he disliked as a child but likes now. I can, for myself: scallops, the shellfish. I disliked the taste, find it OK now.

That's not counting a lot of exotic cuisines I would probably have picked at if I'd encountered them as a child but didn't. College and grad school years were the great eras of discovery for me. I remember exactly when I first had Thai food: I was 25 and a colleague where I was working on my grad school work-study program took me out to dinner at what was probably then the only Thai restaurant in San Francisco. It was also one of the two spiciest Thai restaurants I've ever eaten in, the other being in Birmingham, England, a bit of a surprise since English versions of spicy cuisines tend to be very mild.

Memories of great meals of the past are giving me comfort since right now I'm not eating much of anything.

Comments

[oursin]

English versions of spicy cuisines tend to be very mild.

!!!!!!

The 1000s of South Asian restaurants across the UK would beg to differ.

[calimac]

South Asian in particular. Shockingly mild, even bland.

[oursin]

There's enormous variation within S Asian food - it isn't all fiery hot, which used to be the perception, but nonetheless, it can scale up considerably.

[calimac]

I am talking about stuff that ought to be spicy. Indian curries I've had at home.

Undoubtably there are spicy South Asian restaurants in England. After all, I found that one spicy Thai place. But that was one of two Thai restaurants I ate at in Birmingham on that trip in 1992, and the other was unusually mild.

[oursin]

I have not taken anything like a statistically valid sample, but people with experience in the matter have told me that S Asian cuisine in the US is Not Like that on our fair shores. However, when I have been Over There I was not eating in S Asian places.

(Though I did once posit doing Unusual Culinary Odysseys eating the cuisines of various ethnicities in different countries after having some v strange experiences with Pakistani and I think Greek restaurants in Norway.)

[calimac]

Well, whatever US South Asian cuisine is, it's spicy. North Indian cuisine in particular is usually spicy even when they say it isn't. My wife likes the food but not the spiciness and is regularly annoyed by this. What I found in England mostly wasn't.

[sartorias]

Onions and spinach. (Though I have to say we only got frozen spinach as kids, which was slimy and gritty and I still don't like it. But fresh spinach in a salad? Yum!)

[wild_patience]

Vegetables. We only had canned vegetables, usually green beans or peas, when I was in elementary school and junior high. I think by high school we sometimes had frozen veggies. We never had fresh.

[athenais]

I can only remember one: avocados. Wouldn't touch them as a child, can't get enough of them as an adult. It was likely a texture thing. I didn't like tomatoes then, either, but I still don't like tomatoes.