Have you ever had a time a food so good it "converted" you?
5h 39m ago by lemmy.world/u/uberfreeza in asklemmy
As a further elaboration: growing up, I absolutely hated pasta salad. I could not and would not eat it. But one day, when I was about 22-23, I was working somewhere that includes meals, since shifts were literally all day for a week (save eight hours for sleeping). The cook made a pasta salad that I could only describe as "orgasmic." I ate that same pasta salad for every meal for the next two days until they finally tossed the leftovers. Ever since then, I have been "converted" to enjoy pasta salad. That one dish completely changed how my body reacts to a food that I already tried several times.
In 2016 I was traveling around New Zealand and had an amazing mushroom and cheese toastie. It was so good that I remember thinking, as I drove away, that I'd be happy to eat that toastie over a lot of foods I normally enjoy.
Around a year later I decided to stop eating meat. I begun by allowing myself to eat fish and over a month or so gave up that as well. While not directly related, that mushroom toastie planted a seed in my brain that being a vegetarian didn't mean eating salad every day.
I don't know if or when I would have become a vegetarian anyway, but that toasted sandwich certainly helped me decide when I was ready.
That's rad, I've been on a similar path but I keep on going back to meat from fish
I recently came around on non-seafood sushi (sweet potato tempura rolls). I eat seafood once a year in good faith — all types, over the years — and it’s always a hard no, and I had just lumped sushi into that category. But I honestly didn’t know there were veggie sushi options until this past year, so I gave it a try and loved it.
"Sushi" technically just refers to the vinegared rice. There are a number of non-seafood sushi options. Cucumber, pickled gourd (kampyo), egg, avocado....
Sushi is the one food I can't eat anymore after getting gastric sleeve surgery. I mean I can do sashimi still but what's the point without the rice ya know?
The first time I had a Hefeweisen was the first time I genuinely enjoyed drinking a beer. Since then I've been much more receptive to other types of beer but wheat beers will always be my preference.
Same here! I always felt like the odd one out for not liking any beer. One day I was at a friend's house and they had a random assortment in their fridge and I saw one with a really cool label and it claimed to be from "the world's oldest brewery" which sounded promising.
It was Weihenstephaner Hefe Weißbier, which was of course the easiest thing in the world for me to remember and to request at the time 😆
After that, a local brewpub restaurant had a wheat beer with a hint of raspberry flavor that I liked, and eventually I learned to drink most any beer, but I still love a Weihenstephaner when I come across it.
So many times. Hated asparagus until my aunt made it for me at 16/17 years old. Now I can't get enough.
A Peruvian/Japanese fusion restaurant in DC ended my absolute disdain for mushrooms (specifically shitake) when I was in my mid 30s
I have learned to keep trying things I think I don't like every few years because you never know what meal will change your palette - and maybe your life
When I was a child, we'd often see people walking at the edge of a farm fence adjacent to a country road near us.
I asked my dad what those people were doing. "They're looking for asparagus," he said. Hmph. I knew my dad was just making shit up again, especially with a funny word like asparagus.
Some time later he told me to go up to the fence at the edge of our yard and find some asparagus. Oh, dad, you slay me.
You know what I still see to this day? People walking that same country road, with the same grocery bags. They are foraging for wild asparagus. It's a real thing.
When I cook meat, eggs or with ginger for people who don't like them, they're usually converted. Turns out most people who don't like steaks, ribs, roasts, etc just haven't had good ones
Reminds me of a King of the Hill quote:
Hank: [Presses his tongs into the steak cooking on the grill] Firm but with a little give. Yup, these are medium-rare.
Bobby: What if somebody wants theirs well-done?
Hank: We ask them politely, yet firmly, to leave.
Red tuna (akami) in Japan! I previously never cared much for tuna, unless if splurging on toro, then obviously toro is delicious. Now I realize the majority of the tuna we get is mediocre. Need to go the expensive restaurants to get the good stuff.
I thought pizza was just an ok food until having it in Naples. Just a simple margherita lets the quality of the fresh ingredients shine best!
If they live long enough, every person eventually develops a taste for pickles.
Avocado. For some reason, for years, I thought they'd taste nasty. Turns out, they're just like meat if it was a fruit and I dig that.
Same! I hated guacamole as a kid.
Then all the Avocado toast jokes happened and tried it, and it was great!
Then I started making my own guacamole/eating the good shit in texmex/Mexican restaurants and realized I hated that nasty supermarket national brand guac.
Kenya AA…
I always drank coffee just for the caffeine, but I wanted to cut down on the cream and sugar. So when I’d order the brew of the day, whatever it was, I started taking a sip before drowning it in other flavors.
Buuuut, then I’d go ahead and dump some stuff in it, because I still didn’t like the taste. Until one day, I got a cup and took a sip… and another sip… and decided that THIS cup didn’t need a bunch of stuff in it.
Now I pretty much never add stuff to my coffee( I’ve learned what origins and roasts I like, so I can stay away from coffee I don’t like - and if it’s nasty, it still gets the cream and sugar treatment…
Because life’s too short to drink nasty coffee.
Ajitsuke tamago ("ramen eggs"). I hate eggs. Always have. But it turns out that I love eggs when they are soft boiled or poached and overwhelmed by savory marinade/sauce. Still don't really like the whites.
I had a similar experience with steak.
For the longest time growing up, I just wouldnt not eat steak, id eat meat, bacon was fine, chicken was fine, but steak made me wanna throw up. My parents would keep throwing all these sauces on it, and none of them worked. Eventually, we where at my dads best friends 50th birthday, and he had a really nice roast, I tried it (with no sauce), and suddenly I got it. Ate steak all the time after that.
Going to sound weird but mayo.
I grew up with mustard on my sandwich. I hated foods with mayo in it.
Then, I had that Asian mayo, the Kewpie brand.
Yes, but i mostly chalk it up to me becoming less of a picky eater over time. In this sense it has happened with:
- Coleslaw
- potato salad
- various types of soup
- avocado based foods.
Sometimes you try a new food and its so good that it's all you want to eat (seems to happen most times i visit a new food truck.)
I had a blip where i loved eating olives on pizza and then i started to hate olives again.
If you haven't grown up drinking it, coconut water tastes a bit funky the first time you try it. The first time I tried it, it was kind of funky and I didn't care much for it. The second time I tried coconut water was after hiking several miles in high heat, sunshine, and high humidity, it still tasted a bit funky. It tasted exactly the same actually, but this time, being quite dehydrated and nearing heat exhaustion, it tasted fucking amazing. Now I love that sweet coconut water umami, so much better than Gatorade or any other sports drink.
You mean the savoury coconut water umami?
My mum made the grossest fish. Idk what she did to it or what type of fish it was but it stank up the whole house, tasted worse, and was dry as fuck. I avoided all fish for years, still don't really like fish and chips as an Aussie.
Went fine dining once and one of the courses was a piece of fish with toasted quinoa and Geraldton wax. It was one of my favourite dishes of the fourteen courses. Absolutely delicious. Then I went to Scotland and tried Cullen skink and ended up having that multiple times throughout my trip.
I've realised I just hate bad fish, and that mum wasn't as good a cook everyone said she was -and everyone saying that is even worse.
I refused to eat lettuce until I was 16, cause it's leaves and I knew how leaves taste.
At some point my mom made me try it and I realized it tastes absolutely awesome due to my mom's salad dressing.