Pass the raw chicken: Eating risky foods is on the rise.

If you want a truly exciting dining experience skip the five star reviews and white tablecloth service, and come here, to a windowless room filled with cigarette-smoke in Japan where you can order raw chicken.

If you have any common sense these instructions will seem counterintuitive. But if we are made of a similar culinary cloth — where the last thing you want to do is look like an unadventurous gastronomic wimp afraid of a little salmonella poisoning — you will book the first flight out.

The server doesn’t speak English, so asking him what makes this particular chicken sashimi safe to eat, or even where it comes from, is out of the question. Once the initial fear subsides, I’m left with a feeling of dull annoyance. Frankly, I should already know what raw chicken tastes like. If the best artists sway between genius and madness, then the best food writers should get comfortable living somewhere between gastronomic excellence and salmonella. Anyone can dine at Eleven Madison Park, but it takes a certain type of nerve to bite into something you know could kill you and then go on about your day.

This is why I will seize any opportunity to stuff myself with an endless list of potentially harmful bacteria in the form of unpasteurized cheeses like raw buffalo mozzarella or unpasteurized Stilton, which recently killed two people in New York State due to listeria contamination. If there are brains on the menu, I’m the first person to order them. Give me a cheese specked with mildew — the type that can become toxic once it reaches room temperature — or give me nothing. I have proudly plunked whole pieces of swordfish sashimi, known for its parasites, into my mouth, followed by puffer fish, a delicacy that can be deadly if it’s not prepared correctly due to the fish’s high levels of tetrodotoxin.

If it sounds like I’m bragging, that’s because I am.

Eating dangerous foods is like veganism for the carnivorously inclined. People who dare to try them usually can’t shut up about it.

Each experience feeds an entirely different part of our appetites, one that even the most expensive steak and caviar will never be able to satisfy. With every bite you set yourself apart from the rest of the amateur, avocado-toast loving crowd and become, at least for a moment, interesting. The problem is that, once you’ve tried puffer fish or unpasteurized Stilton and survived, it no longer impresses you, forcing the thrill-seeking eater to move onto the next daunting thing.

As food continues to occupy a growing cultural airspace, eating has assumed the role of entertainer, and liking to eat has become an increasingly popular personality trait. A sort of culinary competition has been spurred among foodies. Today it’s not only about whether you’ve eaten at the right restaurants, it’s about what you dared to order when you were there.

Because of this, formidable foods have become more popular than ever. Craving calf brain ravioli? It’s on the menu at Toronto’s La Banane. In the mood for a hearty serving of thymus glands and pancreases on fine china plates? Head straight to Joe Beef in Montreal. Hankering for the world’s hottest pepper? Sign a waiver at one of the many restaurants offering them and end up in the hospital at your own risk (as many spice enthusiasts often do). Or maybe it’s raw octopus you’re after, a dish that has amassed a loyal foodie following at Gonoe Japanese Sushi in Thornhill, Ont. after being served with a suffocation warning if it isn’t chewed correctly.

Our taste for these dangerous and gruesome culinary adventures is relatively new, yet many other cultures have eaten them for millennia. Rigid and longstanding traditions are followed when it comes to the preparation of dangerous foods. To question them is to disrespect the culture you have decided to inhabit.

Dairy farmers in Switzerland cultivate organic raw milk with decades of experience and strict sanitation practices. Chicken sashimi in Japan is raised without added chemicals and slaughtered the day it is served, leaving almost no time for the growth of salmonella to begin. Brain is not just a pricey, shock-factor menu item at a fancy new restaurant in a highly gentrified part of town, but also a practical ingredient eaten in El Salvador and Mexico because it is an edible part of the animal that would be a waste to throw away.

Nevertheless, as our palates become more adventurous, our fascination with taking things to the next level is not going away anytime soon, which brings us to one final question: should you eat something that could kill you, or at the very least make you very sick?

While medical authorities have said, and will continue to say no, for the adventurous and those fully aware that a panic attack could start anywhere from two minutes to three days after ingesting, the answer has always been: eater beware.