Sampling the rarest food in the world Special

Massimo Marcone, a University of Guelph food scientist and author, is committed to tasting and analyzing the strangest and rarest foods in the world.

Seated in an office surrounded by examples of unusual foods and photographs of the flora and fauna that produce them Marcone admits to fear and failures in his quest for these delicacies. Searching for the elusive morel mushroom in Michigan he once found himself lost as night fell in a woodlot liberally dosed with signs reading 'Trespassers will be shot.' In South America hiking through the Amazon jungle he acknowledges that he could not keep up with his guides who were out pacing him even as they had to cut a trail for him. This did not prevent him from tasting an Amazonian beverage made from mashed maize known as chicha. It also allowed him to taste a food he fears, namely piranha. Arguably, the strangest food (or beverage) he has ever tasted is a brand of coffee known as kopi luwak. Before the beans can be roasted and ground they must undergo a unique treatment: They must be eaten by a civet (an Indonesian tree cat) and then expelled from the rectum. Jokingly, Marcone refers to this rare beverage as "cat scat coffee" or "catpoohchino." Not surprisingly, considering its origin he describes the resulting coffee as having a "chocolaty high end and a muddy bottom." He also admits that it is not his favourite coffee despite the fact that it is the world's most expensive coffee. He prefers Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. However, he describes kopi luwak coffee as a beverage with a story "that feeds the mind." He also points out that favorite childhood foods can "unlock the floodgates of memory." He admits to a horror at the hunting of whales but concedes that spending a week with a Scandinavian fisherman who spends part of each year "taking minke whales" moderated his opinion of some types of whaling. With awe he recounts how a crew of five could butcher and dress a minke whale in less than one hour. Marcone is personable and unassuming and when asked about his friend, journalist Steve Hartman's assertion that he likes giving people the "heebie jeebies" he does not quaver. He replies that the "foods that give people the heebie jeebies are the 'hook' that interests people in the more important aspects of food science.

Key Porter

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Importantly, he remarks that insects are more than a pest, including grasshoppers and locusts, that can destroy crops. They also provide a protein rich alternative food source. Both of his books on weird and wonderful foods In Bad Taste and Acquired Tastes have recently been released in soft-cover editions by Key Porter (Canada).