To ask you what your most unusual/unexpected overseas food experiences are

[Bunnyfuller]

I mean as in you order something, and the interpretation of it is so vastly different to expectations...

Sometimes this might be from fucking picky kids unrealistic ordering or just from a local idea that this is what people from your country eat.

My two favourites - a portion of fries on a side plate with a useful portion of cold tinned peas. And a full roast dinner. Pre cooked and straight out of the fridge (not reheated at all). The latter was put on for an official dinner, spectacular. Luckily there was lots of booze and some divine doughnut-y things I completely gorged myself on had a couple of for pudding.

Ooo, just remembered another one - tiny island resort on Fiji, chicken soup with a chicken's foot bobbing to the surface when I put my spoon in. The horror.

And a near miss - in a traditional Tuscan restaurant, I nearly ordered stuffed chicken neck. My Italian isn't great but I recognised 'pollo' on the menu and though that should be ok (though after the Fiji chicken soup nightmare, you'd think I'd know better). Luckily one of the party I was with was Italian and kindly explained what I was about to order.

I'm a pretty fussy eater, if you hadn't guessed.

Night food market on a Vietnamese island - had several delicious meals prior to the night I was served squid. Complete with beak and eye helpfully hidden in a bubbling pot.
Bloody beak nearly broke my teeth, and the eye....

Whale in Iceland
BBQd rat in Malawi a good few years back.

As a (vegetarian) au pair in France, the mum asked me to blitz and feed the baby a lamb brain. She was just weaning onto solids. I nearly puked.

On a German exchange, the family served up cold cherry soup. It was weird but gorgeous!

On a week long trip to China, I was served pig's foot a couple of times. I tried very hard to have a good try at them (gelatinous and slightly piggy, if you are wondering) both times, applying my 'if you chew long enough, it will go down' tactic. My efforts were obviously noted by my hosts, who presented me with an ox foot at the next meal. It's not something you can smuggle out in a napkin.

Chips floating in a stew at a buffet in Turkey

My friend ordered a bowl of green salad and she received a bowl of chopped iceberg lettuce with not even a dressing.

I suppose it was a bowl of green.

In Turkey I ordered a jacket potato, when it arrived it was mashed potato wrapped in tin foil! They also had black pudding on the menu which turned out to be pepperoni

Ordered lamb in a French restaurant - was lovely but came with a side order of what I assumed was a scoop of pate, but it tasted of bitter dark chocolate and vinegar with a meaty, gritty texture and made me heave. Have no idea to this day what it was!

An egg custard with prawns in the bottom in Japan possibly Kyoto. Not a pleasant surprise. Also experienced the DIY sauces in Prague: pork in a mustard sauce was actually a chop with a dollop of mustard and a dollop of squirty cream.

egg custard with prawns (not envy)

We were once in a small town in Italy and ordered a burger (thought it was a simple thing to order, very basic and we were severely jet lagged so couldn't decide between anything more complex). They brought out a slice of lamb inside a piece of pitta bread with a wooden stick through it. They didn't understand what was wrong 😐 and stared at us the whole time as we ate half of it feeling confused.

Also the same time we were in Italy we visited Pompeii and were in a restaurant nearby. And when we went to pay my boyfriend kept asking to pay, miming writing a bill, he even took out money. Then eventually a waiter went "Ah!" and brought over a bowl full of "Pepe", which is pepper. 🙄🔫 we eventually left because it was paid for as part of the group outing we were on and we didn't even need to be trying to pay.

In France, ordered a quenelle de brochet, with my pathetic French I assumed something on a stick, I got a lovely fishy mousse with a brilliant sauce.

So many :

Philippines :
Balut - the chicken/duck foetus egg. Smells awful.
Boy buwang - fried corn pieces in various flavours, chilli cheese, garlic, spicy, adobo
Maja - it's a sweet made from condense milk, fruit, corn, milk and cornstarch. It's really nice. And not sweet.
A stew which smelled nice and they put sauce. Chilli I thought. - pigs blood

Thailand:
Toast with condensed milk and sugar on top
Fish head soup - just the heads
Beef massaman curry with pineapple so weird but yummy
Bubble tea
There's ice shave - basically shaved ice with a sauce. But you add all sorts of kings like jelly, bread, corn, fruit.
Goat
Ordered chicken with cashew nuts. - they brought us the livers and intestines. Boak
Sour mango with a spicy sauce
Mango sticky rice - amazing
Som tam which is a papaya salad so fresh and vibrant.

I've been to dinner in many people's homes and it's rude to decline food. I'm often offered the eyes of fish, tendons, many times had a dish with the feet or necks bobbing about. Pork intestine - looked awful smells worse. I declined.

Durian ice cream - it's so weird and durian stinks but tastes nice

Fried frog - I didn't try it lol.

Porridge - I ordered it plain - offere with chicken and egg etc. I thought it would be oats, but alas rice - boiled rice in its own starch soup. It's nice especially if you have stomach ache. But I was shocked lol.

Korea:

Fire noodles. So spicy but amazing
A rice based alcohol drink, cheap but effective lol
Ramen - Korean ramen are really nice. The spicy cheese and fire are my favs. But I was expecting cheap noodles like mama in Thailand or the UK's super noodles. But they are really tasty.

Malaysia:

Roti - I love roti but the surprise was how much oil there was.

Nandos - the rice is awful haha. But the potato
Wedges are nice.

I don't really like Malaysian food as it's very oily. But the best tandoori I ever had was in Penang.

Jane green salad is lettuce. Everywhere.

My weirdest was the national speciality in Madeira, of swordfish served with a whole deep fried, battered banana. I couldn't work out what the banana was until I cut into it, so I was boggling a bit.

Not me but my old next door neighbour was one if the first tefl teachers in china. Remember raiders of the list ark when they are given monkey head soup? That happened to her! And apparently she ate it

@Twofurrycats I quite like the egg custard wth chicken or prawns!

On a skiing holiday in Soldeu in Andorra two of us chose, what we interpreted to be, some kind of meat stew. It arrived in the most enormous, deep bowls. On the top were six snails in garlic butter - fortunately we both liked snails, so assumed they were a sort-of built-in starter! Ate them and then got stuck into the stew, which we discovered, apart from the meat element, also contained yet more snails! We reckoned that, overall, we must have had between 30-40 snails each. It was utterly delicious and was the most filling meal I've ever eaten.

Tokyo. Ordered a sashimi platter. Recognised NONE of the fish. Ate it all. Was delicious, although some things were a bit...chewy.

Our host later told us we'd wolfed down monkfish liver (wtf?), sea urchin, jellyfish (looked like tagliatelle) and sea snail.

Yum

If you ask for a glass of water with your meal in China, you will usually get it scalding hot. They look at you funny if you ask for cold. But cold soft drinks or beer are fine

Austrian pizza with corn & tuna. Blurgh!

Roast dinner in Ibiza- the 'Yorkshire pudding' was a vol au vent

Here's one that was actually edible. In an off-the-beaten-track part of Turkey, in a tiny restaurant where the waiter was also the chef, I ordered a plain omelette. The chef asked if I'd like parsley on it to which I replied yes please. When it arrived, the omelette was completely green - I think he had used a ratio of around 10:1 parsley to eggs and blended the parsley with the eggs before cooking.

100 year old eggs and fried chicken feet

On a good note, chilli crab, absolutely delicious