Arthur De Meyer, a Belgian journalist aged 29 years, visited the Disgusting Food museum in Malmo (Sweden) in spring 2019. The Disgusting Food Museum, like the Museum of Sex in New York City and the Museum of Ice Cream in San Francisco is conceptually closer than a museum to an amusement park. The museum has 85 culinary horrors, including ordinary and exotic fare from thirty different countries. Each tour ends with a tasting of 12 items. De Meyer is the son of a food photographer and a cookbook author. He told me that he was an adventurous eater. He was a journalist and prided himself on his ability keep his cool. He said, "But the taste test of war was." "The type where you are defenseless because the bombs go off invisibly inside you."
Hakarl, an Icelandic shark dish, was his first attack on his stomach. He said that eating it was like chewing on three-week-old cheese, which had been plied on by every dog in the area. The next was durian, which is a sweet, custard-like fruit that hails from Southeast Asia. It "smelled like socks in a gym locker, drizzled on paint thinner," but the worst was surstromming. This fermented herring is a favorite in northern Sweden. De Meyer described it as eating a piece of corpse.
The museum's previous record of six was broken by him vomiting ten times. Thankfully, admission tickets can be printed on barf bags that look like airplanes.
Samuel West, a 47-year-old psychologist, came up with the idea for The Disgusting Food Museum. He was born in California, but has lived in Sweden since more than 20 years. He discovered the Museum of Broken Relationships while on a 2016 trip to Zagreb in Croatia. He began to study the remains of failed relationships of strangers, including photos of hookups and a diet book a woman received as a gift from her husband. West came up with the idea of a museum that would focus on failed products and services. He opened the Museum of Failure in Helsingborg (Sweden) a year later. The Museum of Failure was based on the simple idea that blunders were the midwives of failure. The Newton, an Apple personal digital assistant that was released in 1993, is one example of the exhibit at the museum. Although the Newton's poor handwriting and high price almost cost the company its existence, the sleek black design was the inspiration for the iPhone. The exhibits included Bic for Her, a line pens that are specifically designed for women, DivX trademarked in 2003 for "self-destructing DVDs" that could be viewed for just forty-eight hours, a collection Harley-Davidson perfumes, and Trump: The Game, a Monopoly ripoff that was released in 1989. Trump claimed that the game was too complicated and pulled it from shelves.
The Museum of Failure was a commercial success. It attracted visitors from all over the globe and received attention from National Geographic, the Times, and the Washington Post. After reading an article on how reducing beef consumption could slow down climate change, West moved onto his next project in 2018. It was clear that there was a simple way to solve this problem. However, the First World rejected the idea of eating insects as a source of protein. West saw that the fear of failure could have slowed human innovation. Can this aversion be challenged? He said, animatedly, "I just wanted it to know why even talking about eating certain foods makes my skin crawl."
The basic question of what counts as food was the starting point for museum planning. Andreas Ahrens was a former I.T. employee. West recruited Ahrens as his friend. To help West choose the items that would be eligible for exhibition, he enlisted Andreas Ahrens, an ex-I.T. entrepreneur and foodie. They ruled out artificially-flavored gag gifts, such as Rocket Fizz's barf and Jelly Bellys' booger jelly beans. The men also ruled out novelty foods like Oreos and a Polish beer made with a woman’s vaginal yeast. After the initial screening, four hundred items were selected for further processing. The criteria used to select the best were taste, texture and smell as well as the manufacturing process. Foie gras failed the texture, taste and smell tests. West and Ahrens deemed it to be inoffensive. The museum has a permanent place for the dish. It is usually made by forcing ducks to be fed until their livers expand to 10 times their normal size. According to Ahrens many people who have read about the process swear that they will never eat foie gras again after reading it. The process of winnowing the food was vigorous and competitive. West was the larger wimp. He threw up so many more times that it was hard to count. Ahrens found many of the foods to be unpleasant. However, he was only able to get sick after tasting balut (a Filipino egg-fetus snack) which is taken straight from the shell.
After they selected the items, the men had to deal with customs and transport. Ahrens stated that Svid, an Icelandic traditional dish where a sheep's head has been cut in half and boiled was not possible to obtain due to logistical reasons. Instead, the food is represented by a photo showing the head alongside mashed potatoes and pureed root veggies. Ortolan, an endangered French songbird, is also represented by a photo of the head next to mashed potatoes and pureed root vegetables. This is a method that involves blinding the bird, then soaking it in brandy. It is now prohibited in the European Union. The representation of raw monkey brain, which is supposedly being served at Chinese imperial banquets and includes a wooden table that would have been used for holding down a monkey's head while it was cut open and scooped out. An accompanying sign states that it is not clear if this is an urban legend or a traditional Chinese dish.
It was difficult to find authentic foods in the museum's original forms. Cuy, a Peruvian food, required West to watch many YouTube videos to learn how to skin and boil the guinea. He recalled that he sent his wife and children home the day he did it. It felt wrong and bordering on criminal. Ahrens was forced to collect the excrement of his daughter, aged eight, and ferment it with rice wine. Although the final product is displayed at the museum in a gallon container, Ahrens has yet to taste it.
The Disgusting Food Museum ranks No.1 on Tripadvisor. The Disgusting Food Museum is ranked No. 1 on a list containing 94 things to do in Malmo (the third-largest Swedish city). The museum is located on the first floor, in a shopping center, between an art gallery and a furniture shop. This often surprises visitors. Daniela Nusfelean is a Romanian student who visited the museum in January. She sa
id one of her first observations was the lack of odor. Nusfelean recalled thinking, "This place is supposed have so many food." "How is food supposed to smell?
Ahrens, the museum director, explained that the museum has bell jars for more stinky items. He gave me a tour of Zoom earlier this year. Many foods, including kale pache, an Iranian soup made from the head and hooves of a sheep, were displayed in bowls or pots that were atop white tables illuminated by long-necked lamps. Some foods are made fresh each week, while others, such as the poop wine have a long shelf life. The museum's walls looked like a science laboratory. Ahrens, wearing a T-shirt with the museum logo and the word "Yuck!" gestured towards a chalkboard reading "2 days since last vomiting." He smiled.