Gastronomic Adventures: 25 Weird Cuisines from Around the Globe

A Filipino dish called Pinikpikan specifies beating a chicken to death so that the meat is bloodier and thus more tender.

There is a cabbage dish named Blaukraut in Germany, which is called red cabbage in northern Germany, and blue cabbage in southern Germany.

There is a Japanese dish called Odori Don, which is a noodle soup topped with a dead squid that "dances" when soy sauce is poured on it.

Faggots are a traditional dish from the United Kingdom traditionally made from pig's heart, liver and fatty belly meat or bacon minced together.

The national dish of Iceland is Hákarl, a fermented shark meat which is first buried, then hung to dry for several months before eating.

Taiyaki is a Japanese dessert which is prepared in the shape of a fish. It is a cake that is usually filled with sweetened azuki bean paste.

A traditional native Alaskan dish is called "Stink Heads" which are fermented salmon heads. After the fish are caught, the heads are removed and buried in the ground in fermentation pits for several weeks, dug up, and consumed as a putty-ish mash.

In 1812, Grimod de la Reynière, the world's first restaurant critic, put out a recipe for the rôti sans pareil, or roast without equal. It was a 17-bird version of the turducken, though no record exists of whether it was actually made. It was a bustard stuffed with a turkey-goose-pheasant-chicken-duck-guinea fowl-teal-woodcock-partridge-plover-lapwing-quail-thrush-lark-ortolan-bunting and garden warbler, the last being just big enough to hold an olive.

There is a dish common in the Philippines and South East Asia called 'Balut' which consists of a developing duck embryo that is boiled alive and eaten in its shell.

There is a traditional dish from Cornwall, United Kingdom called "stargazy pie", which is named so because fish heads are baked into the top of the pie facing upwards so that they appear to be “gazing at the stars.”