If you have a bad experience with a cuisine, do you ever try it again?

[ThatDude]

Absolutely. I tend to try the few things I don't care for a couple times a year. your palate changes and all that.

I also wouldn't write of a dish or cuisine because I had 1 bad experience with it. Could have been a bad take on the dish, a crappy cook, or just plain wrong. I'll give anything a go, twice if I like it.

 

[Frizz1974]

It took over 10 years to get my mother in law into a Thai restaurant. She stated more than once that she doesn’t eat Thai food - until I lost my temper and asked her exactly how many of the thousands of Thai dishes she was basing this statement on. A couple of years back a big group of us went to Thai and ordered almost the whole menu & she ate. I saw her. I had to bite my tongue.

I’ve found that almost everything has a better version. I’m not a fan of tripe in white sauce. However, cooked Italian or Spanish style in a tomato base. Yum.

I HATED Brussels sprouts until I had them roasted or fried.

I eat pretty much everything. I did have congealed pigs blood at a hot pot place a couple of years ago that I couldn’t swallow but the piece was quite big and I think I should have cut it up & cooked it longer.

 

[Yorky]

Back in '71 we were required to attend the passport control office at the Spanish (Melilla)/Morocco border. The bus left without us so we were stuck there for about 6 hours. The only dish to eat was couscous and it was bloody awful. I've never been able to face it since!

 

[karadekoolaid]

I didn´t used to eat fish. Then one day a friend invited me to a classy Fish restaurant. If I remember rightly, I had salmon trout. Absolutely divine.
Then in Barcelona, 6 years ago, we paid $100 a head to go to a highly recommended restaurant - no menu, just the catch of the day. Razor clams ( first time), xonxo ( like whitebait, but a bit smaller) and sea snails. All down the hatch.
Last year in Mexico City, we sat down in a bar for a drink. Up comes the waiter with a plate of chile salt, limes and - yes, you guessed it - deep-fried grasshoppers. We took a video of everyone trying them. Just sort of crispy; no particular flavour.
So if you don´t ilke a cuisine ( or a dish), give it another go. Life´s too short to miss out on all the goodies available.

 

[Mountain Cat]

I have no idea why I'd ever abandon an entire CUISINE due to a bad experience. Most cuisines have more than one or two dishes or types of dishes.

I have, however, abandoned specific dishes over bad experiences.

1) Minestrone soup. It's not the fault of the soup, and I recognized that even at the time. I was a college kid working a summer job down in New York City. I would take a train in and out to get to the job. One day I was feeling under the weather, so I had the cafeteria minestrone soup for lunch - most of the time when my stomach bothered me back in the day, it was because I needed to consume more food, and the soup seemed light enough and so forth.

Well, let's just say I was mighty sick, and I would leave it at that but for the next part of the story. I got to leave work early and go back to Grand Central Station to catch a train home. (Mom knew she was going to pick me up, no car of my own.) I get on the train, scheduled to leave in 15 minutes. There was actually a bathroom on my train car. Little did I know they were LOCKED until the train was underway. Whatever bug I'd gotten that made me sick didn't care about the door being locked, shall we say.

I have not faced minestrone soup ever since. It was really embarrassing as other passengers considered boarding, too.

2) Peanut butter sandwiches. No, I am not allergic to peanuts. And when I was a young kid, I asked for peanut butter sandwiches every single school day for about 2.5 years. I liked other things, but they didn't lend themselves to school sandwiches. Mom would make me peanut butter, or peanut butter and butter, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all those days. Until one day I took a whiff of the thing in my lunch bag, and could NOT continue. The stuff smelled unrelentingly disgusting. I could not eat peanut butter in any shape or form for years afterwards. I'd be simply nauseous at the stench. I had a housemate in the 90s who would make his peanut butter sandwiches and leave the knife for spreading in the hot water of the sink... it drove me crazy!

I can now eat peanut butter. I like it in good quality dark chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cup makeovers, and I love peanuts in Thai cooking. I can even eat good quality peanut butter out of its jar. JUST DO NOT GIVE ME a peanut butter SANDWICH!!!!

3) Smoked silkworm cocoons. My uncle brought them up to my father, who, like me, tried just about everything once. I think they both pretended to like them, and when I showed up for the balance of the day, they got me to try them. I did try two. Frankly, I think they were smoked in some cesspit sewage. No more! They insisted I take the rest of them home with me as I'd enjoy them. I did take them home, but as I felt my compost corner wouldn't appreciate, they went out in the trash. I will try insects, but anything from that "smoked parentage" - nope. Never again.

 

[Mountain Cat]

I didn´t used to eat fish. Then one day a friend invited me to a classy Fish restaurant. If I remember rightly, I had salmon trout. Absolutely divine.
Then in Barcelona, 6 years ago, we paid $100 a head to go to a highly recommended restaurant - no menu, just the catch of the day. Razor clams ( first time), xonxo ( like whitebait, but a bit smaller) and sea snails. All down the hatch.
Last year in Mexico City, we sat down in a bar for a drink. Up comes the waiter with a plate of chile salt, limes and - yes, you guessed it - deep-fried grasshoppers. We took a video of everyone trying them. Just sort of crispy; no particular flavour.
So if you don´t ilke a cuisine ( or a dish), give it another go. Life´s too short to miss out on all the goodies available.

Good point. I was scared of fish (the bones - parents probably asking me not to swallow any bones) until I was about 6 years old and went fishing with Dad. I caught this tiny little perch. I had to have him for dinner, to commemorate that I caught it. It was at a lake with no size minimum at the time, so I did get to eat what I caught. Haven't stopped eating fish, since.

I would likely turn down fugu. But maybe also because I hear it has no flavor that you can't find elsewhere with safer fishes.

 

[Mountain Cat]

It took over 10 years to get my mother in law into a Thai restaurant. She stated more than once that she doesn’t eat Thai food - until I lost my temper and asked her exactly how many of the thousands of Thai dishes she was basing this statement on. A couple of years back a big group of us went to Thai and ordered almost the whole menu & she ate. I saw her. I had to bite my tongue.

I’ve found that almost everything has a better version. I’m not a fan of tripe in white sauce. However, cooked Italian or Spanish style in a tomato base. Yum.

I HATED Brussels sprouts until I had them roasted or fried.

I eat pretty much everything. I did have congealed pigs blood at a hot pot place a couple of years ago that I couldn’t swallow but the piece was quite big and I think I should have cut it up & cooked it longer.

The family grew up loving Thai food. I and my brother till do. Tripe is great, Dad had a good "Tripe Marinara" dinner, and I have been working on cooking tripe in many different ways. I hated Brussels sprouts because they'd always been boiled when I was a kid (from frozen). Roasting fresh ones is awesome. Fresh just wasn't available when I was young.

 

[Frizz1974]

The family grew up loving Thai food. I and my brother till do. Tripe is great, Dad had a good "Tripe Marinara" dinner, and I have been working on cooking tripe in many different ways. I hated Brussels sprouts because they'd always been boiled when I was a kid (from frozen). Roasting fresh ones is awesome. Fresh just wasn't available when I was young.

My kids have grown up eating every cuisine I come across and can get my hands on the ingredients to cook so they are both good eaters. It was an uphill battle with my son (aspergers means it mostly texture he struggles with)

My partner had a long list of things he didn’t eat when we met but especially raw fish, cheese & lemon. He now adds mild cheddar to his burgers and unless something is super lemony he’s ok with that too. He will try anything I put on the table now though. He even ate salmon tartare recently.

 

[Mountain Cat]

My kids have grown up eating every cuisine I come across and can get my hands on the ingredients to cook so they are both good eaters. It was an uphill battle with my son (aspergers means it mostly texture he struggles with)

My partner had a long list of things he didn’t eat when we met but especially raw fish, cheese & lemon. He now adds mild cheddar to his burgers and unless something is super lemony he’s ok with that too. He will try anything I put on the table now though. He even ate salmon tartare recently.

My folks, especially my father, was of the school that one had to try everything at least once.

I live by that. (Okay, I draw the line at endangered species and at roulette meals as in fugu, and the like) but I do try everything at least once. Some obviously I end up not liking but that's going to be true for anyone.

I'm the kid whose parents once tried to convince me to enjoy some chicken breast by telling me it was sweetbreads, after all.