An Ecuadorian woman has been getting a lot of attention online for devising a very unusual yet surprisingly popular ice-cream flavor – guinea pig. You probably know the guinea pig as a lovable house pet, but in South American countries like Ecuador, Peru or Bolivia people cook guinea pigs with salt and serve them with potatoes and peanut sauce. Still, even in these countries the idea of a guinea pig-flavored ice-cream has been causing quite a bit of eyebrow raising. People are used to the rodents as the main ingredient of traditional dishes, but ice-cream flavor? That would be like turning beef into an ice-cream flavor in the United States, not exactly the kind of business venture most people would even consider getting involved in. And yet, one Quito woman has been selling hundreds of guinea pig ice cream cones per day over the last few months, and as news of her unusual delicacy spreads around the world, demand is expected to skyrocket. Read More »

This past summer British media reported the bizarre job ad posted by an eco-conscious couple looking to pay a chef £5,000 to prepare a wedding banquet out of roadkill. The unusual ad, featured on Bark.com, the UK’s leading online local service marketplace, mentioned that the couple had already sourced about 20kg of roadkill, including squirrel, pheasant, rabbit, partridge and deer, and were looking for someone with experience in preparing courses out of wild meats. The ideal candidate would able to skin, butcher and joint the cuts of meat, as well as prepare them in such a way that the guests wouldn’t know what meat they were eating. Read More »

The Münch, a small coffee house in Osaka, Japan, is probably the only place in the world where you can enjoy a cup of freshly brewed 22-year-old coffee. That’s if you can afford it, as a cup will set you back a whopping $914. The story of what many consider the world’s most expensive cup of coffee started decades ago, totally by mistake. Kanji Tanaka, the owner and sole employee of The Münch, used to a type of ice coffee in the refrigerator so he could serve it to customers right away, only one time he forgot a batch of it in the fridge for over half a year. He couldn’t possibly serve it to paying customers anymore, but before throwing it out he decided to take a sip and see how it tasted. To his surprise, the coffee was still good and had acquired a special flavor. Read More »

It sounds like the sarcastic name of a product you’d expect to hear in a satirical sitcom like The Simpsons, but Poop Like a Champion is an actual cereal that can allegedly get your bowls moving like nothing else. Advertised as “the ultimate colon cleansing formula” or “the number one high fiber cereal for number 2’s”, Poop Like a Champion cereal is packed full of fibers and designed specifically to help you get those bowels moving. Its creators aren’t ashamed to admit that it’s not the greatest tasting cereal money can buy, but it’s not meant to blow you away with its amazing flavor, it’s meant to help you go potty, and apparently it’s very good at doing that. According to my limited research, it’s a combination of corn bran and physllium, sorghum flour and inulin, and each 1/2 cup serving contains 16 grams of fiber, or about 64% your recommended daily allowance for an average 2,000 calorie diet. Read More »

Wattana Panich is a one of the most popular restaurants in Bangkok’s Ekkamai neighborhood, with hundreds of hungry patrons coming in to feast on its selection of delicious soups and stews every day. But the secret of the flavorsome dishes served at this Thai eatery may put a lot of Westerners off. One of the most popular dishes at Wattana Panich is the rich beef noodle soup, made with stewed and raw beef, tripe, meatballs, internal organs and spices. But the most important ingredient is the broth, which, believe it or not, has been simmering for 45 years. It sounds  strange, but it’s true. Instead of throwing away the leftover broth every night, the owners of Wattana Panich carefully strain it and store it to be used as the base for next day’s batch of soup. They’ve been doing this every day for over four decades and credit it as the main secret to their delicious dishes. Read More »

Whether you’re the kind of person who gobbles up pizza slices just to get to the doughy crust as fast as possible, or you just can’t afford a full slice of pizza, you’re probably going this pizza chain’s ingenious new offering – Just the Crust. Inspired by the frequent inquiries of its customers regarding the crust of its popular Neapolitan pizza and what makes it so delicious, Villa Italian Kitchen decided to give the people what they really want – just the crust. Starting tomorrow, the American pizza chain will start selling pizza crust pieces neatly packaged in triangular full slice boxes for only $2.75. Read More »

Most coffee drinkers use cream, milk or sugar to mask the bitterns of the popular morning booster, but one Seattle-based company claims it has engineered a type of “beanless, molecular coffee” that retains  the full flavor of the real thing, but none of its characteristic bitterness. Atomo is the brainchild of experienced food scientist Jarret Stopforth and entrepreneur Andy Kleitsch. They started out with the idea of optimizing coffee and spent four months in a garage-turned-brewing-lab running green beans, roasted beans and brewed coffee through gas and liquid chromatography in order to identify over 1,000 components in coffee, all the way to molecular level. After analyzing all the essential compounds that gave coffee its natural aroma and flavor, they were able to design their own version, which didn’t include the stuff that gives natural coffee its bitterness. Read More »

It may be cute and tiny, but Lil’ Nitro is no joke. Sporting a Scoville rating reashing well into the millions of units, this chewy treat is 900 times hotter than a Jalapeno, making it the world’s hottest gummy bear. After the world’s hottest lollipop and world’s hottest candy, the devious minds at Flamethrower Candy have created the world’s hottest gummy bear. Don’t be deceived by its cute and appealing appearance, as this little guy is holding a dynamite stick for a reason. It’s made with a special chili pepper extract that’s 900 times hotter than a Jalapeno pepper, and several times hotter than the Carolina Reaper, Dragon’s Breath and Pepper X, which are generally regarded as the hottest peppers on the planet. Read More »

Finnish startup Solar Foods has come up with a way to produce a protein-rich food called Solein from electricity, water and air, by using an environment-friendly process similar to brewing beer. Described as the world’s most environmentally friendly protein, Solein is is made by applying electricity to water to release bubbles of carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Living microbes are then added to the liquid to feed on the carbon dioxide and hydrogen bubbles and produce the Solein, which is then dried to make the powder. It’a natural fermentation process similar to beer brewing, but it requires a special reactor that reportedly resembles a hurricane lantern. The dried Solein has a protein content of 50 percent and looks and tastes just like wheat flour. It can be used in all kinds of diets and can be 3D-printed for added texture. Read More »

A Maryland man trying to raise awareness about the confusing nature of expiration dates on consumer products ate expired food for a whole year and lived to tell the tale. Scott Nash got the idea for his unusual experiment began three years ago, when he did something most of us wouldn’t even consider – he ate a yogurt that was six months past his expiration date. The “staunch environmentalist” and owner of MOM’s Organic Market, a D.C.-are grocery store chain, had forgotten the yogurt in the fridge of his old cabin in Virginia in the Spring and only found it again when returned in the Fall. By that time it was already half a year past its expiration date, but that didn’t stop him from mixing it with his smoothie and chugging it down. It didn’t taste funny and he didn’t experience any health problems after consuming it. That got him thinking about the way companies use expiration dates nowadays. Read More »

A small food stall chain in Taiwan has been raising eyebrows due to the shape of its pancake pops. Instead of the usual round design their delicious creations are shaped like whole roasted chickens. Walking past a YesMade food stall, you’d think it was selling miniature rotisserie chickens, but the Taiwanese fast food chain actually specializes in pancake pops. They are made from the same batter as regular pancakes, but they just happen to look like perfectly roasted chickens. YesMade achieves this illusion thanks to their custom-made pancake iron, which features small chicken-shaped molds. As you can imagine, the unique shape of their delicious creations has made YesMade a huge hit on Instagram. Read More »

If you’re looking for the ultimate instagrammable coffee, you’ll have a tough time finding something cooler than Sweet Little Rain. That’s an odd name for a cup of coffee, but once you see it in action, you’ll realize it makes perfect sense. Mellower Coffee, a Chinese coffee shop chain headquartered in Shanghai, owes much of its popularity to its gimmicky Sweet Little Rain, a large cup of Americano coffee served with a fluffy cloud of cotton coffee hanging over it. The steam rises up from the hot coffee melting the cotton candy and causing it to slowly rain down into the cup in the form of sweet sugar droplets.  At around $9 per serving, Sweet Little Rain isn’t the cheapest cup of coffee money can buy, but if you’re looking to impress your Instagram followers, it’s definitely worth it. Read More »

In most places around the world, people are taught that eating raw meat is bad for them due to the high risk of contacting parasites and harmful bacteria, but in Ethiopia raw meat is a popular delicacy. Walking through the streets of Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, it’s not uncommon to see groups of people gathered around restaurant tables feasting on chunks of raw beef or goat meat. Although particularly popular on holidays or various celebrations, like weddings, a lot of people consume raw meat virtually every day. They will tell you that raw meat is a hearty meal that energizes them and refreshes their bodies, as for the risks associated with eating uncooked meat, which include exposure to tapeworms and dangerous bacteria like salmonella and E-coli, most just choose to ignore them. Read More »

A restaurant in the Italian town of Castelfranco Veneto has come up with an ingenious way to get a leg up on the competition – treating guests to a unique dish called “fried air”. Nicola Dinato, the head chef at Feva Restaurant wanted to capture the essence of being outdoors and breathing fresh air in an dish aptly called “aria fritta” or “fried air”. The name is a tad misleading, as the crispy treats are actually made of tapioca skin that’s first baked and then deep fried. However, there’s some air involved in the cooking process as well, or at least a component of it – ozone. After the tapioca skin is baked and fried, it is infused with ozone for 10 minutes, which gives the treats a special perfume. After the special infusion, the crispy fried air is placed on a bed of cotton candy, which Dinato hopes will remind patrons of clouds. Read More »

Apples are generally red, green, yellow or a combination of the three, but if the right geographical conditions are met, they can apparently grow dark purple, almost black, as well. These rare apples are called Black Diamond and they are currently only grown in the mountains of Tibet. Black Diamond apples are a breed of Hua Niu apples (also known as Chinese Red Delicious) that get their unique dark purple color from the geographical conditions of Nyingchi, in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The 50-hectare orchard set up her by Chinese company Dandong Tianluo Sheng Nong E-Commerce Trade Co., Ltd. has an elevation of 3100 meters above sea level, making it the ideal place to grow these intriguing fruit. The temperature differences between day and night are significant, and the fruits get a lot of sunlight and ultraviolet light which causes their skin to go from the characteristic deep red of Hua Niu apples, to dark purple. Read More »