Can We Get Talviel's Most Hated Dishes Of Each Race?

Can we get Talviel's most hated dishes of each race?

I'm really not a picky eater, but Tamriel is a big place with many strange flavours, and some of them are more unconventional than others! Here's a list of the few foods I simply couldn't handle...don't try them the next time you're out exploring unless you really hate yourself!

Nord

Pickled fish (usually river betty, silverside perch, or slaughterfish) is, for some reason, a cornerstone of the Nord diet. Despite having grown up by Riften Fishery, I have nothing but dislike for the jars of sour, slimy fish that the average Nord gulps down every breakfast. Some variants of pickled fish are also fermented, giving it an extremely pungent odour that has made plenty of outlanders throw up or pass out if the jars are mistakenly opened indoors. Pickled fish is also great for catching skeevers when placed in traps. 1/10

Bosmer

Despite having spent almost a year in Valenwood, there are some aspects of Bosmer cuisine that I may never wrap my head around. Thunderbug soup is one of those things. Thunderbug flesh is grilled over an open flame and seasoned with a bit of salt, then stewed in a large cauldron with a copious amount of thunderbug eggs and sometimes other insects (witchetty grubs, grasshoppers, and large spiders are popular). The end result is a hot, lurid green mess that possibly tastes even worse than it looks, as there is no plant-based seasoning to speak of for obvious reasons, and a lot of antennas and legs poking out in various directions which make for a prickly and generally unpleasant meal. Very nutritious though. 4/10

Orc

Smoked bear paw with harpy innards is a classic stronghold delicacy, and one of the most unpleasant dishes I've ever had to try. The bear paw is so tough and dry that it's basically inedible, and the harpy guts and brains are a chewy and acidic grey mess. The best part is the bread that's used to sop up the harpy bile-based sauce, unless you actually touch the sauce itself. 1/10

Altmer

Honestly there isn't much to dislike about Altmer cuisine, but if I had to choose a dish I'm not mad about, it would probably be heron-liver pâté. Wild herons aren't traditional food birds and their diet of frogs, snails and bottom-feeding fish gives their meat a distinctly muddy flavour and stringy texture. This is especially noticeable in pâté form, even when spiced, and no amount of mashing will compensate for the chewiness of cooked heron livers. 4/10

Redguard

Unless you really enjoy the feel of sand in your mouth, I'd recommend steering clear of Alik'r sand-baked camel. The meat of a camel is covered in spices and salt, and lowered into a hot sand pit in the desert and buried for three weeks to "cook". If the jackals or scorpions haven't gotten to your meal before you do, you're in for a dry, dusty treat! The meat becomes so dessicated that you might as well chew on a Ra-Netu, but it has some great crunch from all the sand. You'll be brushing your teeth for days after eating this just to get the feeling of this monstrosity out of your mouth. 3/10

Argonian

Boiled wamasu and swamp jelly salad sounds exotic, but not too terrible, right? Wrong. Wamasu is an acquired taste, but when cooked right it can be quite tasty. Boiling it is absolutely not the right way to cook it, as it becomes slimy and acidic, and develops a nasty oily sheen. Cut that up into chunks and toss it together with raw swamp jellies, seaweed, bitter swamp grasses, and crickets...and you have the makings for Tamriel's worst stomach ache. Definitely not for anybody but Argonians. 3/10

Dunmer

I'm really very fond of Dunmeri cuisine, but I could quite happily live the rest of my life without ever eating guar wrapped in trama root and scathecraw ever again. First off, I love guars, so eating one was like asking me to eat a dog or cat. It turns out that guar meat is extremely tough and ashy-tasting, so wrapping it in trama root and scathecraw is meant to soften it up as it's cooked over a coal grill. The end result is some acrid, bitter and slightly burned-tasting meat that has the texture of an extremely overcooked steak. I believe that the Ashlanders are extremely wise and interesting mer, but I'm really doubting their commitment to good food after trying this. 4/10

Breton

As much as I love Breton food, it isn't really the sort of cuisine for big flavours and spices. As such, you end up with some pretty bland meals, like sweetbreads in pudding. It turns out that sweetbreads are not sweet, nor are they bread (they are usually lamb pancreas, tongues, and testicles), and the pudding isn't pudding (it's a spongy bread thing). In other words, it wasn't the tasty dessert that a young Talviel on her first trip to High Rock was hoping for, but rather a few soggy pieces of breaded mystery meat served with some bizarre gluten sponge and drowned in flavourless, watery gravy. 4/10

Khajiit

Face it, Khajiiti food is fantastic. Well, that is until I made the mistake of reaching for what I thought was a jar of jam for my flatbread one breakfast. I took a big spoonful of what appeared at first be a sweet and fragrant red chutney, and ended up lying down retching for the rest of the day. It turns out that in Elsweyr, many Khajiit enjoy a moon sugar chutney that's made with flaming hot chilies, herbs, fire ants and ant eggs. The acid from the ants only amplifies the capsaicin from the chilies, and most Khajiit don't use more than a teaspoon, let alone a big dollop. It burns, it stings, and nothing you drink or eat after will put out the fire. Consume at your own risk. 2/10

Imperial

Like Altmer cuisine, I really don't have something I actively dislike with Imperial food. However, I am pretty squeamish about the very upper-class delicacy of fried dormice dipped in honey and stuffed with herbs, cheeses, bacon. Admittedly, they're pretty tasty, but the little feet and faces are absolutely horrible to look at, not to mention the amount of tiny bones you have to spit out. 5/10