Pickles

Alright, so pickles.

I like pickles! Not necessarily on sandwiches, but sweet pickles, dill pickles, pickled ginger, pickled pepperocinos, and especially pickled okra. That said:

I do not like Japanese pickles.

Japanese pickles (except for the ginger, I think) are all fermented instead of hot pickles (meaning they don't use hot vinegar to provide acid; they use bacteria). I've fermented beer, tried kombucha, eaten other mold-cured foods before, so I don't mind the gaminess that comes from it.

To me, Japanese pickles don't taste gamey. They taste spoiled.

They've got that kinda funky earthy smell that mold does. It's a penetrating smell, too. Walking through Japanese grocery stores is even unpleasant sometimes because of them, as a lot of times the pickles are just out in barrels, so you can smell them across the floor.

In small batches though (like a single serving at dinner), the smell is manageable. You're not through the woods yet, though. You now have to get by the texture, which is just different enough from plain raw veggie for you to know that somethings not right. Especially when its a pickled root veggie, like a radish or a turnip, things are just crunchy and slimy and chewy.

The weird dinner at Chihana that I just posted about? The fish eggs weren't what got to me. Nor the sperm sacs.

It was the pickles.