‘Ridiculous No.55 Lobster and Crab Butter’ is a decadent handmade butter made by a family company in the UK. It has been voted one of the world’s finest foods by a panel of 355 judges.

If you love food as much as I do, you probably know that there is nothing better than butter. But not all butter is created equal. For example, the ‘Ridiculous No.55 Lobster and Crab Butter’ made by UK-based family company Sublime Butter tastes nothing like the classic dairy product most of us pick up at the supermarket. Not only is it whisked to perfection out of the finest milk fats, but it is mixed in with bits of shellfish (lobster and Devon Crab), as well as caviar, fennel, and lemon to create a truly decadent spread.

Read More »

Generally speaking, frosted cookies are among the simplest, most basic desserts you can find, but that description certainly doesn’t apply to the artistic masterpieces created by Japanese food artist Izumi.

Saying that Izumi’s frosted cookies look too good to eat is an understatement. It’s damn near impossible to believe that they are 100% edible, not to mention eating one of them must feel like ruining a timeless masterpiece. The Japanese food artist uses his talent to create incredible three-dimensional cookie decorations by hand and has developed the skill to recreate almost any anime character.  The 3D aspect is also awe-inspiring, with some characters looking ready to jump off of the cookie.

Read More »

A Chinese food stall owner was recently arrested after admitting to adding poppy husk powder to his dishes to get patrons hooked on them.

In late August of this year, the Lunan Police Station in Lianyungang City, China’s Jiangsu Province, received information that a local hot noodle stall owner might be using illegal ingredients to make his food more appetizing and more addictive. Apparently, the anonymous whistleblower had recently watched public safety warning videos about shady businessmen lacing their food with poppy husks to make them seem more appetizing, and wondered if the food stall that made the delicious hot noodles he loved so much was doing the same thing. As it turned out, they were in fact adding poppy husk powder to the noodles, to make them literally addictive, as a way to boost business.

Read More »

Ashton Fisher, a 12-year-old boy from the UK spent over a decade living only on a specific brand of white bread and fruit yogurt before being diagnosed with food phobia.

Growing children require a healthy, balanced diet, but to say Ashton Fisher has had anything but that would be a gross understatement. Ever since he was two, the 12-year-old boy from Norfolk would get scared and begin to cry if his parents tried to feed him anything but Warburtons sliced white bread and strawberry and banana Munch Bunch yogurts. Although no one knows the exact reason why Ashton developed this bizarre food phobia, his mother, Cara, believes it might have been triggered by having reflux as a baby.

Read More »

Ram Kand Mool, a drum-shaped tuber that has been sold as a hearty snack on Indian street corners for at least several decades remains a mystery to scientists, as no one can figure out what plant produces it.

Indian botanists developed an interest in ram kand mool in the 1980s, after trying and failing to find out the origins of the almost paper-thin snacks cut out of giant reddish tubers by street vendors. None of them were willing to reveal the plant that produced it, and those that did gave conflicting answers. Some claimed that it was a root, others that it was the stem of a plant, but most either refused to answer or claimed that they bought the tubers from third parties and genuinely didn’t know the source. Stranger still was the fact that not even science could provide a clear answer to the botanists’ questions.

Ram kand mool is often advertised as the only food source of Lord Ram when he was exiled to forests along with his wife Sita and brother Lakshman, and vendors claim it can cool you down during the summer, quench both hunger and thirst, and provide all sorts of medicinal relief. It is served with all sorts of seasonings, from chili and salt, to lime and sugar. It’s cut and served as very thin slices out of tubers that can reportedly weigh up to 300 kilograms.

Read More »

Priced at an eye-watering $214, Quintessential Grilled Cheese has held the the record for the world’s most expensive commercially-available sandwich for over seven years.

You could say that New York-based restaurant Serendipity 3 is specialized in setting food-related Guinness records. It currently holds world records, most expensive desert, most expensive hamburger, most expensive hot dog, largest wedding cake and largest cup of hot chocolate. But the one we’re interested in today is the records for world’s most expensive sandwich, which happens to be a humble grilled cheese treat. Named Quintessential Grilled Cheese, the sandwich is deceptively simple, as it features some of the world’s most exclusive ingredients.

Read More »

Synsepalum dulcificum, aka the miracle fruit or miracle berry, is a unique plant known to produce fruits that, when eaten, make all sour foods and drinks subsequently ingested taste sweet.

For centuries, indigenous tribes of Ghana, in West Africa, used the fruits of the Synsepalum dulcificum plant to sweeten sour or tart fruits, foods, and drinks, but it wasn’t until 1968 that the miraculin protein that makes the fruits special was finally extracted and turned into tablets. That made it possible for virtually anyone in the world to experience the “taste tripping” that miracle berries are so famous for. Miraculin essentially alters your senses, causing things that should taste sour, like lemon or vinegar, to taste sweet, or even too sweet for up to 60 minutes after the protein is consumed.

Read More »

An amateur chef in Guatemala has become famous for turning the country’s Pacaya volcano into a pop-up pizzeria that serves fresh volcanically-baked pizza to tourists.

Mario David García Mansilla grew up in the shadow of Pacaya, one of Guatemala’s most active volcanos, and although he loved his home enough to know he never wanted to leave, he never imagined he would one day use the volcano as a pizza oven. Today, his now popular Pizza Pacaya has become one of highlights of visiting the active volcano, with tourists paying a premium to have Mansilla cook his delicious pies right on the smoldering volcanic rock, right next to flowing rivers of lava.

Read More »

The Golden Boy, a decadent delicacy made with 100 percent Wagyu A5, Beluga caviar, king crab, white truffle, among other premium ingredients, has just broken the record for world’s most expensive burger, with a price of 5,000 euros ($6,000).

The Golden Boy burger was created by Robbert Jan de Veen, owner of Dutch restaurant De Daltons, who came up with the idea while sitting in his restaurant pretending to get some work done. As he browsed the internet to pass the time, he stumbled over the previous record for the world’s most expensive burger, held by an Oregon restaurant that made a $5,000 burger that weight a whopping 352 kilograms, back in 2011. He found it cool, but decided he could make an even more expensive burger, and one that could actually be finished by one person.

Read More »

‘Mojie Ringo’ is a Japanese technique of harnessing the power of the sun to create beautifully decorated apples without the use of any sort of chemicals.

For centuries, apple growers in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture have been creating stunning heirloom apples by using the mojie ringo technique. The process is fairly simple, as basically implies depriving the apples of sunlight for a period of time and then applying stencils to ensure that some portion of the apple peel remains discolored. Most often than not, mojie ringo apples are decorated with messages and symbols of good fortune and prosperity, and are offered as gifts.

Read More »

A 23-year-old university student was recently sentenced to two and a half years in prison for swindling KFC out of about $31,000 in fast food, by taking advantage of an ordering loophole.

The student, surnamed Xu first discovered the glitch in 2018, and not only continued to use it to his benefit for the next six months, but he also shared it with friends and even profited financially from it. The Jiangsu-based student accidentally realized that he could order free food by paying for it using coupons in the official KFC app, and then immediately asking for a refund of the coupons using the company’s WeChat account. It was any KFC’s fan dream come true, all the fried chicken you could eat, totally free.

Read More »

Yin and Yang Fish is a controversial dish where the body of a fish is cooked, while the head is kept fresh so that it moves its mouth and eyes while it is being eaten.

From fish that smells like a public toilet, to a cheese as hard as rock and even a fish-head-stuffed pie, the world is full of weird foods, but few dishes can be described as truly disturbing. Well, the dish you’re about to discover is one such rarity. Reportedly invented in the early 2000s, by a restauranteur in Chiayi City, Taiwan, Yin and Yang fish, also known as “dead and alive fish”, is definitely not a dish for the faint of heart. It consist of a whole fish, usually carp, whose body has been cooked and covered in sauce, but whose head is maintained raw so that its mouth and eyes are still moving while it is being eaten.

Read More »

Inspired by the firm belief that spaghetti is far from the ideal shape for pasta, a man set out to create a perfectly shaped pasta. The result of his hard work is now known as cascatelli.

The story of how cascatelli came to be began in 2018, when Dan Pashman, the host of the James Beard and Webby Award-winning “Sporkful” podcast, made some harsh remarks about spaghetti, on the stage of the Caveat Theater, in front of a live audience. His comments got a lot of attention and inspired him to dedicate a lot of his time to researching pasta shapes in a quest to create the ideal pasta design, which needed to have an appealing texture, have the perfect bite, and, most importantly, hold the right amount of sauce. Believe it or not, he spent almost three years on this project.

Read More »

Photos of a moldy-looking bun sold on Chinese online marketplace Taobao have been getting a lot of attention on Asian social media lately, because of its unappetizing appearance.

Chinese company Nanjing Yican Foods has been turning a lot of heads with a rather unique-looking product – match and cheese bun that looks a few months past its expiration date. Underneath its light brown exterior, the cheese matcha bun has a light green appearance that looks just like the disgusting food mold that develops on old bread products. Only it’s actually worse than that, as squeezing the bun causes the green matcha and cheese mixture to ooze out of it…

Read More »

Escamol is an ancient dish made with the edible larvae and pupae of two species of ants, known for its nutty, buttery flavor. It has been consumed in Mexico since the time of the Aztecs.

Commonly known as ‘Mexican caviar’, because of its similarity to fish eggs, escamol consists larvae and pupae of ants belonging to the Liometopum apiculatum and L. occidentale, two species native to some semi-arid areas of Mexico and the southern United States. Its origins can be traced back hundreds of years, back to the time of the Aztecs, when consumption of insects as food was very common. Escamol was considered a delicacy by the Aztecs, who would trade for it with nomadic tribes such as the Otomis, because it was difficult to procure. Its price in Mexican restaurants suggests that escamol has retained its status as delicacy in modern times as well.

Read More »