Ask Lemmy

Rendang

Used to eat it as often as I could when I visited southeast asia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_ghanoush

Looks like slop, tastes like a party in your mouth.

Pretty much all seafood. Shrimp in particular tastes fantastic but looks like something you’d try to flatten with a shoe.

I frequently watch videos of people from outside the US trying biscuits and gravy for the first time. Every one starts with “I’m not trying that disgusting slop” and ends with “I want to eat this every day for the rest of my life”

Random pic from the Internet for reference.

Most curries look like vom slop and taste HEAVENLY

Kebab:

A good split pea soup, for sure.

Edit: and macarons look super pretty but taste..meh? Imo. Like if you were to imagine what Barbie food tasted like, it’d be a macaron.

Peanut brittle.

Some may disagree, but I always thought it looks like frozen vomit

I'm gonna catch hate for this, but I don't care. I have a thing that physically looks awful, but also seems conceptually awful.

Sometimes, if I have the money and I wanna get a little treat, I'll buy a block of cheese, Nutella, and bread, and make a Nutella and cheese sandwich. I do not know why or how I got to the point where I ate it, but I did and I love it.

Usually, I'd get like a pecorino romano cheese, cut a couple slices of dark (full grain) bread, and just paste it in place with Nutella, and that would be a little desert for me. If I have a lot of cheese on there, I might add raspberry jam (not too much or it gets waaaaay too sweet).

The tater tot hotdish I grew up with. ... Under the tots at least.

In Nice there’s a kind of swisschard gnocchi that’s called merda de can (dog’s shit) because of its appearance.

Judge by yourself (image taken from here).

The shape can be different depending on how you make them, but it always looks a bit suspicious.

Spam. When it comes out of the can, it looks like a disgusting gelatinous blob. But when you cut it thin and pan fry it, it's actually pretty tasty.Pretty much any canned meat. Ever seen a whole canned chicken? Although most canned meat doesn't taste nearly as good as fresh. But there really isn't a "fresh" spam. So I think it fits the question. https://c8.alamy.com/comp/CW0NEJ/luncheon-meat-on-plate-CW0NEJ.jpg

Xinxin de bofe. A brazilian food made (As far as I know) only in Bahia, created by the slaves during imperial time. It's good af, but it was hard to convince me to try the first time.

Poutine tastes a lot better than it looks

Looks awful, tastes great? Lots of fried foods are the first things that comes to mind. They look beige and bland more often than not, but can be really good (in moderation, too much makes me sick).

Looks great and tastes awful goes to bananas. They look good and all but my goodness they suck.

Refried beans literally look like diarrhea doodoo. Thankfully they taste way better.

Mämmi

Sausage gravy.

For the looks good but tastes awful category I'd go with fondant.

Thai Pounded Jackfruit

very tasty

For the other way around:
Wedding cake looks great but usually tastes awful (compared to other cake). These cakes are usually drier, or are starting to get old by the time they get eaten.

Fresh passionfruit. If you've never had it before, literally looks like an alien egg sac

Almost every single meal that's served as slop. Slop can be very tasty, but it's slop.

A whole roasted pig. It's horrifying to look at, but so damn yummy.

"Looks great tastes awful" -- fruits that have been bred/engineered for shelf appearance over taste (e.g. certain varieties of supermarket tomatoes and apples), and desserts like cakes that have all manner of pretty and intricate decorations on them, but then taste bland or off.

Japanese curry looks like... the end-result of a stomach issue, but if they make it right it's sooo good, especially on chicken katsu.

As a 'Murican, I'll say Vegemite. Black, gooey, smells like an unwashed armpit, but I love it on a sandwich with salami and mustard. Mixed it into a chili that ended up winning a chili cook off.

Shame you can only easily find Marmite around here. It's similar, but the texture is different, more like rubber cement.