Would you eat this? Hong Kong museum serves up world’s strangest foods
Key Takeaways
- The museum displays more than 80 unusual foods from 35 countries.
- Visitors can smell exhibits and sample selected foods at a supervised tasting bar.
- The exhibition explores how culture shapes perceptions of what makes food disgusting.
From fermented shark to sheep-eyeball juice, the exhibition challenges visitors to smell and taste foods considered normal in some cultures but revolting in others.
Would you drink sheep-eyeball juice or take a bite of fermented shark?
Hong Kong's Disgusting Food Museum is putting visitors' stomachs to the test with more than 80 unusual foods from 35 countries.
The exhibition at GATE33 Gallery in AIRSIDE, Kai Tak, features everything from crickets and bull testicles to fermented shark and sheep-eyeball juice.
Visitors can smell exhibits at special odour stations and, for those willing to go further, sample selected foods under staff supervision.
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"Disgust is a universal emotion, designed to protect us from consuming potentially dangerous substances that could be poisonous and kill us. It serves to protect us as a species," explained museum co-founder Andreas Ahrens.
Visitors are handed a specially designed vomit bag before entering five themed zones examining how smell, taste, texture, preparation and preservation influence people's reactions to food.
But what one person considers revolting may be a familiar dish to someone else.
"The museum explores this kind of emotion and shows foods from all over the world that may be perceived as disgusting, whether due to taste, smell, texture, or production method, but are actually normal and even loved in their cultures," Ahrens said.
The museum's tasting bar offers samples ranging from insects to fermented herring and shark.
Ahrens said cow urine was the food he personally found most difficult to consume.
"The most disgusting food for me is probably cow urine. I've had it a couple of times. It's an Indian kind of medicine - more of a remedy than something people drink for flavour. But it has a smell that attacks your nose as soon as you open it, and it tastes like it burns your throat going down."
The exhibition also examines how perceptions of disgust differ across cultures and explores alternative protein sources, including insects, and their potential place in more sustainable diets.
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The Disgusting Food Museum runs from September 29 to November 26.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
