Bizarre Taste in Food

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Reporter: So, Mr. Presley, what do you do every morning when you wake up?
Elvis Presley: Simple. I get out of bed, get dressed, and make a Peanut Butter-Banana-Bacon Sandwich.

—An Interview with the King of Rock

Bizarre Taste in Food is when a character, main or minor, does something irregular to their meal that becomes a defining trait. Note that this has nothing to do with the viewer or players' taste, but the character to witness it.

Differs from Cordon Bleugh Chef in the sense that the food is not inedible because of the cook. Its when the character does something minor to the food that completely transforms it.

Typically after doing so, the Cloud Cuckoo Lander will try the food and proclaim that it tastes better, much to the chagrin of the others.

Has overlap with Wacky Cravings when a character is pregnant.

Examples of Bizarre Taste in Food include:

Anime and Manga

  • Bleach: In one of the early episodes, Orihime is talking about strange food she eats.
    • Later, it's revealed that Rangiku also enjoys her bizarre cooking.
  • In Gintama, one of Toushiro Hijikata's defining character traits is his love of mayonnaise. He tends to put so much of it on his food that it becomes unrecognizable. Multiple characters remark on it as being rather disgusting.
  • Pokemon:
    • Jesse has a tendency to enjoy food that others find inedible. Misty is a hopeless cook, and May once made PokeBlocks so bad that only a Munchlax could eat them; Jesse found both girls' fare delicious. Possibly on a related note, Jesse herself is a lousy cook.
    • Professor Oak likes pizza with anchovies, spinach, and pineapple.
  • In One Piece, the meal that Apis fixes for the crew hardly seems appetizing or even edible, and most of them only eat it to be polite. Luffy, however, sees nothing wrong with it. Then again, it's hard to find a food Luffy doesn't like.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Sora is a Big Eater but has some odd tastes. In one episode he combines yogurt with mashed potatoes; in another, he puts chocolate syrup on sardines. Yuya's mother claims to have seen Sora put peanut butter on scrambled eggs and ketchup on ice cream, something she claims is "charming". He actually claims this odd diet makes him smarter.

Film

Literature

  • The aliens in the Roswell High series put Tabasco sauce on almost all their food and combine flavors in ways that would make Earthlings vomit. This was carried over into the TV show based on the books (see below).

Live-Action TV

  • This trope is inverted in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The Ferengi cannot believe that Hu-mans enjoy root beer, and occasionally insult other Ferengi by implying that they enjoy root beer.
  • The Eleventh Doctor's taste for fish sticks dipped in custard in Doctor Who.
  • Fringe Observers will cover their food in peppers and douse it in Hot Sauce before eating it.
  • Subverted and invoked in an episode of The Voyage of the Mimi. One character prepares a sandwich and describes all the ingredients in it. It's so disgusting it makes the person she's talking to throw up. It turns out she wasn't really planning on eating it - she just thought that inducing vomiting might be a good way to help the other character stop feeling seasick.
  • Power Rangers:
    • In Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, Loki likes to eat rats, preferably ones that aren't dead yet. This might be justifiable on the surface (seeing as he's a demon) but even they other demons find his eating habits disgusting.
    • In Power Rangers Turbo, Divatox and her henchmen all love pizza, but they prefer it burned with raw fish heads as topping. One episode also has Divatox ordering takeout, "with a side of flies".
  • Dawn, the little sister of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was notorious for this. In one episode, her sandwich order is salami with peanut butter. "Oh right, like eggplant is normal?" she asks, referring to Willow's sandwich. She also likes anchovies on pizza, a notorious Stock Yuck.
    • Anya likes to eat moldy cheese, one of many odd reminders that she is a former vengeance demon trying to adjust to being human.
  • In season 3 of Stranger Things, Lucas claims he actually likes the New Coke. Of course, whether New Coke was truly a "bad" soft drink or not is debatable, but in 1985 (where the series is set and New Coke was released) Lucas' opinion would have been sorely in the minority.
  • The aliens in Roswell put Tabasco sauce on almost all of their food and even bake it into brownies.
  • M*A*S*H has many examples:
    • One Running Gag in the series is the low-grade liquor that Hawkeye makes in a homemade gin still. Comparing it to paint thinner or battery acid is common, although most of the cast are fine with it.
    • In "The Sniper", Radar risks running to the mess tent during the crisis for a ketchup on rye sandwich. "With butter and lettuce!" he adds.
    • Speaking of which, Hawkeye fixes him, B.J., and Father Mulcahy some rather odd sandwiches, with peanut butter, jelly, lettuce, mayonnaise, ham, more mayonnaise, turkey, more mayonnaise, cheese, and even more mayonnaise.
    • In another episode, Charles dates a Korean B-girl, who likes meatloaf topped with vanilla pudding.
    • In "Big Mac", the 4077th is preparing for a visit from General Douglas MacArthur, and is told that the General eats the exact same meals as the troops. "Does he like his ice cream on top of his beef stew like we do?" asks Hawkeye.
    • Colonel Potter likes raisin cookies; the ones with the stale raisins.
    • Klinger claims he likes garlic pie.
    • Most everyone at the 4077th does not like the chow in the mess hall, but in one episode, a visiting surgeon from the 8063rd claims it's good, saying that the food at his camp is bad. That's where Hawkeye currently is, although when he comes back at the end, all he has to say about the place is that everyone thought he was boring.

Newspaper Comics

  • A Garfield strip had Garfield douse Jon's scrambled eggs with ketchup, much to Jon's disgust.
  • Zippy the Pinhead enjoys Ding Dongs with taco sauce. Creator Bill Griffith recounted how he had the combo available, as a joke, at a book signing - and gave away a lot of them!
  • Peanuts:
    • In one strip, Linus is eating candy; he gives Lucy one, which leads to this exchange:

Lucy: BLEAH! What in the world are those?
Linus: (nonchalantly, reaching into the bag) Sour marshmallows!

  • In another, he is eating sugar lumps with honey while watching TV. When Lucy is again disgusted, he adds, "They're good with cinnamon too!"
  • In another, Sally's friend Eudora brings a chocolate sandwich to school, which is a chocolate bar on dark bread. She says she often wonders what it would be like with gravy. Sally seems grossed out at the thought.

Video Games

  • In Uno Undercover Agent, a seven- or eight-year-old character made lunch for her family of four. When her mother said that the sandwiches were delicious and asked what was in them, the kid replied "Mayonnaise, sardines, tomato and half a stick of gum."
  • In the Nancy Drew games, recurring character Professor Hotchkiss is fond of things like roast beef with caramel sauce or curried waffle sandwiches.
  • In Deadly Premonition, Harry Stewart's order at the diner is a sandwich with turkey, strawberry jam, and cereal; it's not exactly clear how he can eat it, given that his condition requires a feeding tube. His assistant suggests that York try it, and York actually seems to find it tasty.
  • Bear Hugger (Canada, Eh?) from Punch Out loves maple syrup. So what's wrong with that, you may ask? He doesn't put it on waffles or pancakes, he drinks it right out of the bottle.

Web Original

  • It is yet undiscovered just how The Nostalgia Critic can eat sugar-frosted burrito-stuffed, lard-filled, liposuction-butter hotpockets all the time and still stay as skinny as he does.
  • Mortimer from Newheimburg likes his pizza loaded down with every topping, including breadsticks.

Western Animation

  • Teen Titans:
    • Starfire's tastes alternated between this and the Alien Lunch type. She'd often drink mustard out of the bottle with a straw, and in one episode suggested pickles, bananas, and mint frosting on pizza.
    • Mammoth, the big, tough guy among the H.I.V.E. group, was a Big Eater who'd eat almost anything, even the spoiled, moldy food in the Titan's fridge.
  • Pizza has always been the Trademark Favorite Food of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but their choice of toppings was often bizarre or flat out insane. Examples included: Tuna fish, peanut butter and grape jelly. Peanut butter and clams. Peanut butter, avocado, and extra pickles. Marshmallow and pepperoni. Marshmallow and asparagus. Guacamole and Marshmallow. Butterscotch, onions, and anchovies. Tea and toast. Chocolate sprinkles and clam sauce. Chocolate-chip. Chocolate fudge with extra garlic. Chocolate fudge, sardine, chili pepper, whipped cream. Anchovies and hot fudge. Pepperoni and hot fudge. Pepperoni and pickles. Jellybean and sausage. Salami pizza with double yogurt. Shredded coconut and sweet pickles. Strawberry with anchovy sauce. Hot oatmeal. Popcorn. Anchovies and bananas. Granola and licorice. Goulash.
    • One episode opens with Leonardo and Michelangelo grocery shopping; Leo urges him to think healthier, saying "you had peanut butter and jelly on your pizza last night". Mikey objects, saying it was caramel and chocolate fudge.
    • One truly bizarre example was Irma's birthday, where Michelangelo brought ice cream pizzas with such flavors as garlic-vanilla and anchovy-butterscotch, Irma herself favoring the former.
    • Some other characters on the show had odd tastes in pizza toppings. April seems okay with banana plus sausage. One time Michelangelo got a job at a pizza delivery place called Weird Pizza to make money; the place said it would put any topping on a pizza that a customer requested. (Shredder was actually running the place, hoping to attract the Turtles to it due to their odd tastes). Anyway, Michelangelo ended up delivering some pizzas with very odd requests, like pickles and ice cream, (to a woman in her third trimester, it seemed) and plain cheese with whole wheat crust to Vernon, which even Mikey finds weird.
    • In an episode where their friend Napoleon Bonafrog (one of the Punk Frogs) comes to visit, Michelangelo makes him a special pizza with mealworms, gnats, and mosquitoes; Napoleon is upset that it doesn't have flies.
  • The Simpsons: Homer is known to be a Big Eater with little regard for eating healthy, but he's eaten some pretty odd things, like mayonnaise (as in just mayonnaise, without putting it on anything), Maggie's baby food, flour (when he's depressed), and Vaseline. (In regards to the last one, the writers commented it was the most disgusting thing Homer ever ate.)
  • InThe Smurfs episode "The Grumpy Gremlin", the eponymous gremlin's favorite food is grelch, a relish made from wild onions and garlic that smells pretty foul, likely why the gremlin has no friends (well, that and the fact that he's pretty grumpy) but he eventually makes friends with a dragon who also loves grelch.
  • In an episode of Garfield and Friends, Garfield and Odie get stuck in a shelter (which is, of course, an animal prison) where the food is so disgusting, Garfield refuses to eat it. ("Never thought I'd ever say that," he remarks.) Odie, however, likes it, prompting Garfield to say, "You'd think a tongue like that would have some decent taste buds."

Real Life

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