A Taipei-based restaurant has been getting a lot of attention for its newest addition to the menu- a ramen dish topped with a steamed 14-legged isopod that looks like something out of an Alien movie.

The Ramen Boy restaurant recently took to Facebook to announce its latest dish, a bowl of ramen featuring a generous helping of giant isopod (Bathynomus giganteus), which it describes as a “dream ingredient”. Called “Giant isopod with creamy chicken broth ramen”, the dish consists of a large bowl of ramen and a large isopod steamed in its own shell. To prepare the deep-sea crustacean, the cooks remove the stomach viscera, keeping the creamy glands for consumption, and steam it. The white meat is said to taste like lobster and crab, while the yellow glands are “unexpectedly sweet”.

Read More »

Japanese luxury ice cream brand Cellato recently set a new Guinness record for the world’s most expensive ice cream with a decadent treat priced at a whopping 880,000 yen ($6,700) per portion.

On April 25, a Guinness World Records representative certified Byakuya, Cellato’s new protein-rich ice cream, as the most expensive in the world. It consists of a velvety base made with milk, two types of cheese, egg yolks, and sake leek, and is topped with Parmigiano cheese, white truffle, truffle oil, and gold leaf. The ‘highest grade’ gelato has a faint sweetness, complex taste, and a luxurious, smooth texture. It comes packaged in a stylish black box. It includes a hand-made metal spoon created by Takeuchi craftsmen in Fushimi, Kyoto, using techniques and materials used in the construction of temples and shrines. One 130ml Byakuya ice cream is currently available on the Cellato website for 880,000 yen ($6,700).

Read More »

A popular Japanese hotel has been forced to issue a public apology after it was reported that employees at its cafe fermented a citrus drink by using the bacteria on their own hands.

The AWA Nishiizu Hotel in Numazu, Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, has come under fire for putting its clients’ health at risk by breaking basic hygiene rules. On April 23rd, the popular TV show ‘Beat Takeshi’s TV Tackle‘ showcased how much Japan’s travel trends have changed in Japan by featuring a ‘health’ drink sold by a hotel cafe in Shizuoka. The orange concoction kept in large plastic jars was apparently a syrup made with squeezed summer mandarins and sugar, but the secret ingredient that set it apart from similar drinks was the fermentation process. According to an interviewed employee, the syrup was fermented with the help of bacteria indigenous to the human hand, so they would just stick their hands in the jar and stir it…

Read More »

The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper recently sparked controversy in Japan with an article on consuming raw crow meat, a practice that experts say could cause serious health problems, even death.

Last month, the Tokyo Shimbun, one of the most-read newspapers in Japan, published an article on the consumption of so-called ‘crow sashimi’ (raw crow meat marinated in various sauces). The journalist basically described their experience eating crow meat both cooked and raw at a gathering of crow meat lovers in Ibaraki Prefecture, claiming that the crow sashimi was both refreshing and easy to chew, compared to the grilled meat which was extremely tough and dry. The article caused a lot of confusion online, and the Japanese Health Ministry ultimately posted a message on its official Twitter account warning people not to indulge in raw crow meat, as it could cost them their lives.

Read More »

Indigirka Salad, a Russian fish salad that originated in Yakutia, the coldest inhabited region in the world, was recently voted the worst dish in the world by the readers of online food guide Taste Atlas.

Indigirka is a rather simple dish – it consists of diced whitefish such as broad whitefish, elma, and muksun combined with onions, and seasoned with oil, salt, and pepper. That doesn’t sound so bad, right? Well, at least not so bad as other dishes we’ve featured on Oddity Central in the past. The problem with Indigirka salad is that the fish is not only raw, but frozen solid, which is to be expected from a dish born in a region where temperatures routinely drop below -70 degrees Celsius. The dish is usually served as an appetizer, accompanied by lemon wedges and a shot of vodka.

Read More »

Isolated on an island in the middle of the southeastern Pacific Ocean, the bees of Easter Island are free of all the pathogens and pesticides ravaging the global bee population, and therefore produce the purest honey on the planet.

The beekeepers of Chile’s Easter Island are fully aware that their bees may one day become the salvation of the world’s most important polinator. With bee colonies all over the world struggling to survive serious threats like pesticide poisoning, new diseases and climate change, the bees of Easter Island are probably the only ones in the world yet to be affected by such problems. And their owners hope to keep it that way. They have managed to convince the local government to ban the importation of bees, because of the significant risk of contamination.

Read More »

An Australian company specializing in cultivated meat recently unveiled a giant meatball allegedly made from lab-grown meat using wooly mammoth DNA.

While most cultured meat companies are focused on producing alternatives to conventional meats like chicken, beef and pork, Australian start-up Vow is taking a different approach. It is focusing on mixing and matching cells from different unconventional animal species, even ones that have been extinct for thousands of years. To prove that it can be done, Vow took the DNA sequence for mammoth myoglobin, a key muscle protein in giving meat its flavor, and filled the few gaps in the strand with elephant DNA. They then put this sequence in myoblast stem cells from a sheep and grew the tens of billions of cells necessary to create the lab-grown meat.

Read More »

Neuzeller Klosterbräu, a brewery in eastern Germany, claims to have devised a way to create a powdered beer that, when mixed with water, tasted almost exactly like the original liquid beverage.

The global beer industry is massive, but it’s also one of the least efficient in the world. Transporting large quantities of beer bottled in heavy glass bottles all over the world is expensive, but what if you didn’t have to? What if some of the world’s most famous breweries could just ship their products overseas in powdered form, and the company on the receiving end would just have to add water to it? German brewery Neuzeller Klosterbräu claims to have come up with a process to create any type of beer in powdered form, alcohol and carbonation included. All anyone has to do is add water and they are left with a regular beer.

Read More »

The Sandhills of North Carolina is said to be the only place in the world where bees produce purple honey, an iridescent concoction that looks more like alien goo than the sweet nectar we know and love.

From the expensive yet bitter Corbezzolo Honey to the meat honey produced by vulture bees, we’ve featured some unusual types of honey here on Oddity Central over the years. However, none of them are as visually striking as the purple honey produced in North Carolina. It sounds like the stuff of legends, something to lure honey and beekeeping aficionados from around the world, but this extremely rare liquid is quite real. Purple honey is said to be sweeter than the amber kind and apparently has some subtle fruit notes as well.

Read More »

A Canadian startup claims to have come up with the technology to create a plant-based salmon filet that looks, feels, and tastes like real wild salmon.

Plant-based meat alternatives have been around for years now, with brands like Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods being among the most well-known in the burgeoning industry. But fish and seafood alternatives haven’t gotten nearly as much attention from the media as meat ones. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, or that they are in any way less technologically advanced. On the contrary, the progress in this niche has been nothing short of impressive, with one startup claiming to have created a raw plant-based salmon filet that looks, flakes, and tastes like wild salmon.

Read More »

Several kids in Indonesia have reportedly suffered stomach burns after consuming a popular liquid nitrogen-containing street snack called ‘chiki ngebul’.

Commonly known as ‘dragon’s breath’ in Indonesia, chiki ngebul is an assortment of rainbow-colored candies coated in a cloud of liquid nitrogen mist that causes the person eating them to exhale that mist, like a dragon. However, health experts warn that if the snack is consumed before the liquid nitrogen has evaporated, it poses a very real risk of intestinal burns and perforations. So far, over 20 kids have been diagnosed with stomach burns after allegedly filming themselves eating chiki ngebul as part of a dangerous TikTok trend.

Read More »

KFC Thailand recently teamed up with several scent experts to create incense sticks that not only look edible but also smell like KFC fried chicken when lit.

Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe containing 11 herbs and spices is notoriously hard to replicate in the kitchen, let alone in insence sticks, but KFC Thailand claims to have achieved the impossible. Partnering with a number of scent and perfume experts, the Thai branch of the international fast food chain managed to come up with an incense stick formula that not only looks good enough to eat, but gives off the same aroma as KFC fried chicken when lit. The only problem is that you can’t buy these incense sticks, only win them.

Read More »

A restaurant in Osaka, Japan has built a reputation for serving traditional miso ramen with an unusual twist, like a slice of strawberry shortcake.

Franken, a Japanese restaurant specializing in miso ramen, first made international news headlines last January, when it started selling a unique variant of sweet-and-sour red miso ramen with a cone of soft-serve vanilla ice cream melting in the middle of the bowl. The combination sounds offputting, but the restaurant was so confident that people would love it that it only served its red miso ramen with the ice cream cone. Well, until this month, when Franken started selling another weird dish, a miso ramen with a slice of strawberry shortcake soaking in the hearty soup.

Read More »

Chu-hi-cha is the name of a new type of tea discovered by a Japanese researcher at Kyoto University. It involves brewing the droppings of caterpillars that have feasted on various plants.

Tsuyoshi Maruoka came up with the idea of caterpillar tea during graduate studies at Kyoto University’s Faculty of Agriculture, while researching the mysterious relationship between insects and plants. One day, a senior brought 50 gypsy moth larvae into the lab and told Maruoka that they were a souvenir. He didn’t really know what to do with them at first, but he eventually decided to at least keep them alive until he could decide, so he picked some leaves from a nearby cherry tree and fed them to the caterpillars. When cleaning the droppings left by the critters, he noticed that they had a pleasantly fragrant smell and was almost instantly inspired to brew them into tea.

Read More »

Japanese convenience store chain Lawson recently launched a rather intriguing new product – flavorless candy that apparently tastes like emptiness.

Whether it be sweet, sour, salty or even spicy, candy has always been associated with a type of flavor. Well, at least until now, because flavorless candy is a thing these days. Lawson, one of Japan’s largest convenience store chains is currently testing a number of products, including the aptly-named Aji no Shinai? Ame (Tasteless? Candy), which apparently tastes like nothing. As you can imagine, the marketed lack of flavor has been raising eyebrows in Japan, and for good reason, after all, can you even imagine sucking on a candy that doesn’t have any taste?

Read More »