Maggots and cobra hearts adorn ‘Disgusting Food Museum’
Cheese teeming with squirming maggots, sheep’s eye juice and mouse wine: the “Disgusting Food Museum” explores why a dish seems delicious to some, but for others is stomach-churning.
On show for three months at an old slaughterhouse in the southern Swedish city of Malmo, the exhibit -- created by Samuel West, who previously served up the Museum of Failure -- promises to shock the senses.
“Disgust is always subjective because it comes with what we grew up with. It’s kind of an indoctrination,” says museum director Andreas Ahrens. “If we grew up with something, we don’t find it disgusting,” he says.
To highlight the point, the exhibition puts foods from around the world on an equal footing, so lobster and foie gras are presented in the same way as chewy kiddie sweets and rabbits’ heads.
Gastronomic explorers are warned on entry: the exhibit is not for the squeamish. But, conveniently, the entry ticket is -- a sickness bag.
Bag in hand then, visitors venture off on a world tour of specialities, some of which may seem to a Western palate like ingredients in a witch’s brew but are considered delicacies.
“The Disgusting Food Museum exists to let people explore the world of food and to see both their own food and (other food) from the lens of another culture,” says
Ahrens. Its founder “began by thinking of other museums that don’t exist that he would like to visit, and that led to the Disgusting Food Museum,” he adds cheerfully. AFP
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