Meerkat Prompts: The Most Adventurous Meal
A good question, and one that has quite a few potential answers. Down the years I have eaten a few reasonably unusual (for my location at least) things. For me, the highlights would include deer meat (in the form of burgers), ostrich steak (which was very nice), oysters, and kangaroo curry.
Deer is not a million miles away from beef (at least, that’s what I recall), and the same must be said of kangaroo, though the roo is a bit lighter, for lack of a better term. Having one as a burger and one as a curry makes a direct comparison tricky. Both were nice, but the ostrich was, as I remember, wonderful. I happened upon it at a restaurant in Portugal, and from memory, this place did a lovely lamb pasanda as well. They also finished the evening with a small glass of port, which went down a treat!
The oysters were had in Australia, and I don’t remember much, save for a texturally weird feeling, and a flavour that wasn’t bad, but not especially amazing either. I dare say it was quite adventurous for me at the time, but it’s also not something I’d go back to. I’d be more interested in the deer or the roo! The ostrich would also be on the list of desirables.
In another take on the idea of adventurous eating, the past 10 years or so have seen me experiment more with spicy food. I had something of an aversion to vindaloos and the like, but I have grown better at handling them. There are still limits – my wife has sometimes brought home insanely hot noodles that made me cry – but I’m definitely better with the spice. It’s certainly fair to say that I’ve managed to be better at trying out new foods. If I had to pin down one to declare as the most adventurous, then purely because it’s still quite unusual here in the UK, I’ll go with kangaroo. It isn’t the most exotic in terms of style or flavour, but you don’t find it on these shores very often. Then again, the same could be said of ostrich!
