I never tasted * until...

Randy - likewise with the tame upbringing. But tastes change as one gets older. I didn't like fish until I was in my teens and was in my 20s before liking any seafood - first shrimp, then lobster, etc. However, I was 25 when I discovered an allergy to scallops (gotta watch that bouliebais (sp?) and the "seafood" platter). I'm 57 now and acquired a taste for anchovies on pizza about 4 years ago. Likewise with tempenade and calamari. This past MOCOOL was my first exposure to humus. There are still many foods I've never tried. My exposure to mushrooms is limited to white buttons and portabellas from the grocery store. I've never tasted truffles or fois gras and probably several other items.

I could never get used to tripe and onions!! My mother worked in London so the nanny was always cooking the stuff. It was not until I worked in a London hotel that I learnt how to cook it properly. Now I cannot get enough when going home.

Then there are kippers.............!!

For most of my fairly long life I could not stand asparagus. The mere smell of it caused me to upchuck. It must have been the way my mother, God love her, cooked it. During our marriage, dear wife would occasionally get a can! of it for herself. I reacted the same way except kept my other food in the stomach.

Then this past May (five months before my 67th birthday) on the way over to the Finger Lakes; we stopped in the Albany area to visit Bev's cousin and family. They fixed young asparagus stalks by steaming them and serving with Hollandaise sauce. I loved it. Now can't get enough of it.

The problem now is that we fix them while concentrating of what wine to serve with the main course, forgetting that only a few wines go with asparagus!

[Robin Garr]

I'll bet you all have stories of things you only tasted later in life?

In spite of having grown up in a whitebread era in a middle-size city between the coasts, I was lucky to have parents who taught us that dining out should be an exciting adventure (even if we did have typical '60s fare at home), and they dressed up the kids and took us to "grown-up" restaurants fairly regularly and encouraged us to try lobster and other weird things. I give them the credit for my general lack of food taboos.

I guess the best answer I can give is sushi. I wasn't afraid of it (80 million Japanese can't all be wrong), and I ready to embrace it as soon as I could get some. But you couldn't get it here before the 1980s, so I had to go to San Francisco for my first experience of it.

I'm 43.

My folks are good cooks, and in fact, Dad put himself through college cooking at the resorts in the Thousand Islands. But both of my parents were university professors, so it often fell to the kids (I have 8 siblings) to cook dinner, so quality and inventiveness was hit and miss on a daily basis.

Happily, however, my folks were also the foreign student advisors so we had people from all over the world regularly in and out of our home, and the guests would often prepare dishes from their native countries.

So the list of things I hadn't been exposed to as a kid is not overly long, but my best friend (who lived in China) introduced me to fresh lychees about 7 years ago or so.

I absolutely adore them. Of course, we have to settle for canned most of the time. But still. Yum!

As a dedicated omnivore, I've always loved to try new foods. We lived on a farm so fresh or home canned foods were always available, and there were a variety of different cultures represented among the local farmers -- German, Swiss, French, Belgian, Norwegian and Swedish, in particular. Church socials, barn raisings and threshing parties provided an extraordinary range of different foods.

The University of Wisconsin had a very diverse student body -- graduate students from outside the US formed 10% of the population -- and I roomed with people from Turkey, Korea, China and Japan and a wonderful Jewish cook from the Lower East Side -- all of whom cooked for us on a rotating basis. Working in food service at the Wisconsin Union broadened my horizons even futher.

Business and personal travel did even more -- jet planes now bring the culinary world to Whole Foods in Ridgewood and the Market Basket in Franklin Lakes -- but I had to go to the source for a few foods -- sea cucumbers in Taiwan, durian in Malaysia, cauliflower of wonderful diversity in India.

I can remember the first time I've had a number of foods -- but rarely have tried one that I haven't liked. It's been a great journey, and continues still.

Regards, Bob

Vegetarian Indian cuisine, which I never had until I was in graduate school. A couple of university professors brought some relatives over from Inda and helped them open a restaurant called Annapurna. It offered uncompromised, authentic vegetarian Indian cuisine from the Udipi area in southern India. One of the other professors raved about the food and took some of us grad students along to the restaurant.

I was in complete palate shock. Everything looked, smelled, and tasted like nothing I'd ever had before. The meal started with a thin hot-and-sour soup (a rasam), served with various seasoned Indian snack biscuits. I'd never had soup and crackers before where the crackers were assertively spicy. The main course was a masala dosa, stuffed with hot-spicy seasoned potatoes, along with a raita, and a dab of lime pickle. The lime pickle was extremely hot, sour, and salty at the same time, and edible only a tiny bit at a time. The idea of stuffing a crisp, thin pancake with potatoes was very odd to me. But it all was delicious. I was glad for the raita to help cool my palate down.

Then the dessert arrived--gulab jamun. The rose/saffron syrup smelled wonderful, but sitting in it were a couple of things that looked to me like giant caterpillar turds. But they were delicious and I became an addict with the first mouthful.

I loved everything in that meal and became a regular customer of the restaurant. But that first meal was the only one I'd ever had where all the food seemed alien in some way, and I had no reference points from which to approach it.

-Paul W.

[Robin Garr]

a restaurant called Annapurna. It offered uncompromised, authentic vegetarian Indian cuisine from the Udipi area in southern India.

Okay, I've got to ask: Why did an authentic Southern Indian restaurant choose a name from Nepal?

Okay, I've got to ask: Why did an authentic Southern Indian restaurant choose a name from Nepal?

Udupi, in Karnataka. See:

http://www.karnatakatourism.com/coastal/udupi/index.htm

The restaurant spelled it "Udipi", which a Google search seems to indicate is a common alternate transliteration.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Randy, good move on the reformulated question. I was once less careful, and my punishment was Stuart answering "my wife". Or was it Lindsay Lohan?

Truly fine Chinese food would be my pick. Growing up in Phoenix in the '60's, I don't know if we even had a really good Chinese restaurant in town. If we did, I certainly never ate there. Through college and afterwards, my idea of Chinese food was plates of greasy noodles or bland, greasy blends of some kind of meat and vegetables served with rice. And egg rolls that spurted grease as you bit into them and managed to still have no flavor whatsoever. It never really occured to me that China would have a highly developed cuisine with many centuries behind it. I just figured they hated eating there.

One dinner changed my perception of Chinese food. It was probably the late '80's and a friend of mine who knows how to eat well had a bunch of us meet at a place called Sampan here in Sacramento. I wasn't thrilled but figured what the hell. We ended up with an eight-course meal that absolutel blew me away. My first experience with Peking duck was that night, as well as a bunch of other dishes that were from an entirely different time-space continuum from the Chinese food I'd had up until that meal. It was one of those, "OMG, I finally get this!" moments.

Mike

[Robin Garr]

Udupi, in Karnataka.

Let me restate this: Why would an authentic South Indian restaurant run by people from Udupi in Karnataka choose the name "Annapurna," which is a mountain in Nepal?

The restaurant folks explained why they chose the name Annapurna in the cover blurb on their menu. I don't remember--it was 20+ years ago. It was something to do with the mountain as a symbol of purity and spirtual goodness.

-Paul W.

Or was it Lindsay Lohan? Rolling Eyes

Not my type. I prefer 'em with three digit IQs.

But just to put your Universe back in order, I did PM Randy right after the original question was posted with the obvious answer.

Not my type. I prefer 'em with three digit IQs.

Yeah, 007....

Errrr, what's the statute of limitations for statutory rape?

a restaurant called Annapurna. It offered uncompromised, authentic vegetarian Indian cuisine from the Udipi area in southern India.

Okay, I've got to ask: Why did an authentic Southern Indian restaurant choose a name from Nepal?

There is a restaurant in Downtown Santa Rosa that is also called Annapurna. They claim the cuisine is Tibetan, but it is typical of standard Indian fair that can be found here in Lexington (I'm not sure of the regional differences in this type of food) . It is fantastic and we plan a trip every time we're in NoCal. To tie in to this thread, this, three years ago, was my first experience with Indian food.

In my 20s, I discovered steamed clams less than a year before I moved to New Mexico. On Fridays, a bunch of us teachers would frequent a bar after school where there were always a dozen clams for a buck. After a couple of beers to screw up my courage, I tried a plate and was hooked.

Now, I get clams only when I visit the east coast because they're way too expensive here.

[Robin Garr]

There is a restaurant in Downtown Santa Rosa that is also called Annapurna.

There was a short-lived Indian vegetarian place in Louisville (Plainview, actually, in the 'burbs) also called Annapurna. It's actually a fairly common name for Indian restuarants in the US for the reasons Paul has stated and more: It's a meaningful name in Hindu mythology, symbolic, and also has the benefits of being easy to pronounce in English and rings at least a distant bell in the minds of literate Westerners.

My slightly more cynical point, though, is that it's a name much more likely to be used by a generic Indian-American curry house than a seriously authentic Indian regional restaurant, which you would expect to choose a name more closely tied to its region and culture. But what do I know?

As you indirectly say, Rule One is that you've got to get people in the door first. Unfamiliar names would, I think, have less of a chance, especially because Southern cuisine is so different than what people are accustomed to. (What, no tandoori chicken?! Where's the biryani? Hey, there's no korma here!! What's this dosa stuff, anyway?) At least if you can get them in and seated, there's a chance that the authentic regional cuisine will hook them- and Southern is eminently hookable.

[Robin Garr]

As you indirectly say, Rule One is that you've got to get people in the door first. Unfamiliar names would, I think, have less of a chance, especially because Southern cuisine is so different than what people are accustomed to.

You make a good point. Best Southern Indian place I ever et, in Queens, was called ... Jackson Diner. (They didn't bother to change the name of their predecessor.)

Southern is eminently hookable.

No joke! Gimme some masala dosa and a few of them iddlies, willya?

Being from the west coast originally, I was not sheltered from foods. I pretty much ate everything I could. I think that has definately helped me later on.

Although, I had never tried, let alone heard of, Okra until I moved out to Missouri.

There are some people out here who don't like it, which kind of made me not so sure about trying it. But after I did, I loved it. Pickled, fried, how ever... chances are I would probably at least give it a try.