Blue cheese.

Haggis

They're wrong, but I get it

皮蛋 a.k.a. "century egg" or, more boringly, "preserved egg".

I get it. I really do. Everything about these from the colour to the texture to the aroma to the flavour is highly alien to most people's tastebuds. (It took me ten years to warm up to them myself!) But now that I pushed through it, they're one of my favourite things.

...edited to add this picture for those who are unfamiliar:

Black licorice.

I really like olives, but I totally get how they're not for everyone. I also love capers and seaweed.

Liver and Onion, anchovies, chunchullo, whitebait, blood and tongue sausage... generally these fall in two categories:

• Food that has a particularly strong flavor that clashes with what people are used to, and
• Food that is made from the parts of an animal that is not "meat" and therefore has an unfamiliar texture.

They're wrong on all accounts - taste is acquired, and people should at least try food out of their comfort zone - but considering that it took 20 years for me to even consider trying shrimp (which still isn't my first choice, but I like it now) I can understand.

tofu

Bleu cheese. It's got the funk, and is literally moldy; I can see how that could be off-putting for someone.

Cilantro. Because I know there's people who have a gene that makes it taste like soap to them.

Pineapple on pizza.

Cauliflower soup. It tastes amazing to me, but it really does smell like farts

Durian. Apparently it's absolutely disgusting for some people.

Uni:

Oatmeal. Yes, it's the texture and temperature of boogers, but I never ate my boogers growing up. What I ate growing up was a lot of oatmeal.

Grilled liver and onions and jarred Gefilte Fish. Both I grew up eating as an Ashkenazi jew with a working mom who didn't have time to make her own Gefilte Fish haha. I do understand that both are an acquired taste though.

Sushi. Steak tartar.

I like my meat raw if I can eat it without dying.

Spaghetti with sugar.

Sea Oysters! Back when I lived by the coast, I would tag along for a ride with my fishermen uncle; we would cut some oysters with a knife from the side of the port and snack on them through the day; Just opening them up with a knife, add chopped purple onions, avocado, tomatoes, lemon and hot sauce and slurp em' off the shell!

Mustard

Goat cheese, lamb/mutton, truffle and any kind of mushroom, spicy foods

Once I had this dark chocolate with chile pepper and pop rocks in it, no one else wanted to try it but I really liked it

Vegemite on toast

Espresso with tabasco.

It’s not about the food but about the time of enjoying the taste of it

I like big dishes in the morning. Like really salty, savoury and messy

I routinely wake up, smell an imaginary scent of a whole dinner (hallucinations) and proceed to eat it as first thing in the morning

I like Sushi Bake, but when I posted it in one of the food communities on lemmy, I was surprised that a significant % of people in the comments hated it.

Boiled Peanuts. I love 'em, but they're salty and sodden and messy, and they can range from a disconcerting pop texture to a disconcerting slimy texture, all in the same batch.

Button Mushrooms / Cherry Tomatoes - my friend once commented that it felt like chewing eyeballs.

Waiting on the balut comment... 🤢🤮

Most of my lazy dishes are pretty terrible on paper but are really tasty imo.

For example I sometimes make a fried noodles and tofu that as a sauce has a fuckton of sriracha and nutritional yeast. It's basically a super spicy ans super umami dish, but you kind of need to let it grow on you.

Meat, cheese and dairy

Fried Blood Sausage.
It looks like actual, coagulated blood.
But it's really tasty (to me).