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Pad Thai ice cream at JP Licks in Boston. Shudder...

It's not horrifyingly strange or anything but:

Licorice (scary and gray looking, but delicious)
Tea Berry

Both are from the awesome ice cream shop, the Franklin Fountain, in Philly. They try to recreate a early 'soda shoppe' kind of atmosphere. They make most of their own ice cream.

Lobster ice cream at a seafood festival in NH. I love lobster, and I love ice cream, but that was GROSS.

Taro (purple) swirled with some sort of mutant baby coconut (phonetically makapino--I have no idea how to spell it).

hmm, i haven't had any weird flavors!!! unless the name "fudge tracks" grosses you out ahahah

i love the chinatown ice cream factory in nyc - almond cookie is AWESOME. and at otto's on 8th street, their gelato is to-die-for...i always get olive oil and ricotta. mmmmmmmmmmweeeee!

It's not strange in the sense of gross and is probably surprising only to Americans, however.... The first time I was in France, I was surprised and delighted to eat lavender ice cream. It was fantastic - even from street vendors - and I've often since regretted that it's almost impossible to find in the States.

squid ink ice cream - that was NOT good.

Alisa K - I love that mentioned the Franklin Fountain! My boyfriend used to work there. I ate that licorice ice cream by the pint... amazing! And I don't even really like licorice. Tea Berry was his favorite. During the Holidays they also had Chocolate Stout (made with stout beer). So good.

P.S. @ katiebug - Don't know where you're from but the Franklin Fountain in Philly sells lavender candy, gum and even had lavender soda for ice cream floats!

Beet icecream. It wasn't good or bad. Just odd.

From the local best-ice-cream-ever place, Sebastian Joe's: pepper (and something else?), and garlic (not garlicky enough). I've also had lavender, but it doesn't strike me as bizarre since it goes with sweet in my mind.

I like to sample new flavors, though I don't like ice cream in general.

sally599--Ube/taro macapuno? That's a very common Filipino pairing--goes well in everything from cakes to, in my opinion, ice cream. Now I wish I had some!

When I was a little kid, I got a hand-cranked Snoopy ice cream maker. My mom always loved to experiment with food and would make flavors based on fruits and vegetables we grew, including some Asian produce I've never even seen outside of our yard. There were tame flavors like avocado ice cream. The strangest, though, was definitely sweet corn ice cream. It tasted fine. It was just strange to see whole corn kernels in ice cream.

crazy betty - thanks for the tip! i have several friends in philly; next time i visit them, i'll check it out!

This doesn't strike me as strange anymore, but 20 years ago I was quite taken aback to be presented with azuki bean ice cream (it was Japanese). I like azuki beans fine in savory dishes, but I still don't like them sweet. Unfortunately, I married a Japanese man and I am faced with azuki bean confections quite frequently.

Beans and ice cream still don't work for me. I'm trying to imagine--cannellini ice cream? lima bean ice cream? It can be done, but...why?

i've had basil ice cream, which was delicious, in Panama. and i've seen (but didn't eat) green pea ice cream pops in China. my friend ate one and said it tasted just like peas.

In oaxaca, there is a chain of gelato places. I cannot remember the name. I actually enjoyed the jamaica gelato, though I hate jamaica (hibiscus juice/tea/agua). They did have avocado gelato, which tastes disgusting like slippery frozen avocado. I suggest people find chamoy ice cream or even just chamoy itself. pretty tasty.

Garlic ice cream in Gilroy.

Smoked ice cream at Graham Elliot.

scary ice cream in Czech Republic??? now I'm really wondering because usually here people hardly dare to go further than vanilla, chocolate and strawberry... stracciatella is almost strange.. Are you sure it was ice cream? :)
BTW: I'm wondering about your Czech food experience: I've been living here for a long time but, as Italian, I cannot get over the ketchup pasta combination *ugh* (but pasta poppy seeds sugar was my worst culture shock)

2 Strange but tasty flavors i was unprepared for made by a friend:

Lavender Ice Cream
and
Clove Ice Cream

Strange and enticing

beer ice cream. and while it sounds like a lame frat gimmick, I actually had it at BarMasa in the TimeWarner Center, so it was intended to be high-end. I thought it tasted like the remains of that bottle of beer you put in the freezer to cool down quickly and forgot about.

my bust, it was actually at Nobu. nonetheless, same idea.

Lavender gelato, rose gelato, purple sweet potato ice cream, Avocado ice cream and ginger gelato.

I pretty much loved them all, especially the delicate colors of the lavender and rose. The purple sweet potato is, uh... really REALLY purple.

I had a bite of my boyfriend's chocolate wasabi paleta. It was an creamy, not a fruity paleta so it was like ice cream on a stick. This was at Las Paletas in Nashville, TN, which will be featured in an upcoming Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Foodnetwork, August 13!! I LOOOOVE Las Paletas!

Sobaya in NYC has honey/wasabi ice cream. Weird.

strawberry basil vodka ice cream. it was sold at central market in fort worth,tx though i am sure you can get it at any central market. it was good, but had a bit of an odd aftertaste.

Cognac with fig
Whiskey with quince

Incredible.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/curdsandwhey/1363410087/

Also Jeni's in Columbus, OH has some interesting flavors like Thai chili and more...

Oh and homemade (by someone else) bacon ice cream. Good stuff!

Lobster ice cream in Camden, Maine. I tried it so I could say I did. Yeah. Once. Never again.
A better memory would be sesame ice cream...surprisingly heavy, but pretty good.

@Uptown Girl...Ooh, Las Paletas, those are SO good! I visited Nashville in the spring and was treated to their fantastic popsicles - I wish we had a place like that up here in DC!

Anyone have a good recipe to make your own paletas?

Honey lavender ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery in SF -- it felt strange to eat something I'd normally associate with potpourri but I acquired a liking to it. And some folks might find this strange but I loved it: Mitchell's (also in SF) used to serve maize y queso ice cream...corn and cheese ice cream!

When I was in Japan about ten years ago, I was served a bowl of ice cream at the end of dinner in a Chinese restaurant. As a vegetarian, I'd spent a lot of time on the trip asking my grandma to explain to me what I was eating and to explain to servers in Japanese that I didn't want any meat. But I figured ice cream was a safe bet, so I ate it, including the rufflly garnish that surrounded it. I'd eaten a lot of new-to-me mushrooms thus far on the trip, and figured it was some kind of fungus too. Turned out it was jellyfish. Oops.

i've had cheese ice cream in the philippines, which was pretty tasty. i love the strawberry balsamic and cinnamon chocolate ice creams/gelatos from scoops in la.

Corn ice cream in Mexico is delicious, and also popsicles made of chopped cucumber, jicama, pineapple and mango with chile. This is AMAZING!
Also, liquorice ice cream is delicious in a cone with a scoop of mint ice cream. (italy)

In rome there's an ice cream shop that makes the most delicious cardamom ice cream...

I forget how many years ago it was, but I got a pint of Stout ice cream with chocolate covered pretzels. It was EXCELLENT. I wish they still made it.

The absolute worst I've ever seen and will not try - Durian ice cream.

I'm very interested in trying garlic ice cream. I went to a garlic festival on Long Island last year but they ran out of it before I got there.

The weirdest ice cream I ever had was in Thailand, it had peas and carrots in it. I think there was corn in it, too.

i've had the viper ice cream you mention and cow tongue as well. or cow something or other.... the viper wasn't tasty per se but it wasn't offense except for the price. the cow tongue was just awful as they didn't really meld in the ingredient so much as just drop in pieces of chopped up cow tongue.


except for some of the animals mentioned.... everything else is pretty norm. i've had lavender with cardamom, red bean, black and white sesame, ube/purple potato, corn, avocado, durian, any type of beer, etc as ice cream. most of the time i or my bf was making it and they're all very tasty.

Plaid Ninja--agreed on the durian ice cream! I had it in Seattle once, as a milkshake--my first taste of durian. I thought the first sip was ok, but the more I drank, the worse it got. I couldn't get past five sips before I started feeling queasy. *shudder* I'd forgotten all about it until I saw your comment. Darn you.

Red bean ice cream is my favorite.

There is a place in Rehoboth beach that had bacon ice cream and a few silly ones named after Harry Potter characters. Luna Lovegood (butterscotch) and Sirius Black (squid ink).

I LOVE trying strange ice cream flavors. There are only two I've had to give up on mid-cone: squid ink soft-serve from a vendor outside Tsukiji Fish Market in Japan and a chamoy paleta from Paleteria La Michoacana in LA. The paleta tasted like a Sriracha popsicle.

I've had some great experimental flavors at Scoops in LA. White chocolate & Jim Beam was a recent favorite. Yum!

I had garlic ice cream at the Gilroy garlic festival also. It wasn't bad.

I just tried durian ice cream in a milk shake and I thought it was really gross. I could sort of see why some people like it so much but it's just not my type of flavor profile.

The strangest flavor I've ever tried was guacamole ice cream from Torico's Homemade in Jersey City. I love their avocado ice cream so I didn't think guacomole would be that different. It wasn't horrible but it was certainly weird.

Hmm, I'm really curious about the corn ice cream mentioned. And, I wouldn't mind trying bacon too!

I too had the Pad Thai Ice Cream at JP licks. Thank God I only did a taster - it was the most disgusting thing ever. So, so bad.

And yet, my favorite odd ice cream is also from JP Licks - sweet cream with slightly cooked rice, I think they call it Rice-K ice cream or something for the Red Sox Pitcher.

And recently - fresh mint ice cream from Christina's in Cambridge. You could definitely taste the ruffage part of it but you got used to it and it was really good.

I once had a merlot sorbet. I'm sure it was a good idea but it tasted like icky, sugary, cold melot syrup. Pretty nasty!

i had black sesame ice cream in japan. it was really good. i love weird japanese desserts.

there's a great place for paletas that i go to a lot, called paleteria fernandez in port chester, ny (in westchester). they have delicious avocado paletas (sweet and creamy) and some other spicy/sweet fruit combos, like the pico de gallo with mango and chili pepper. everything is super fresh and they make it right there in the store.

There's some weird ice cream out there. But I doubt a Czech would make pork ice cream (not the Czechs I know anyway), unless they had some sort of gourmet pretentions...

I've had clam chowder ice cream. It would be good for a palate cleansing ice between courses, but I wouldn't want to eat a big bowl full for dessert.

The man who made ice cream for the great Christina's in Cambridge briefly had an ice cream place in Arlington, MA, in the early '00s. That's where I had it.

I had wasabi pea ice cream at Toscanini's in Cambridge. It wasn't that the wasabi was bad, it was those dry mushy peas. Ick.

Horseradish ice cream.

I haven't tried this particular one, but it sounds interesting:
http://www.horseradish.org/HorseradishIceCream_recipes.html

In the PI, I had cheese ice cream, which tasted like cheesy popcorn. Down in TX, I had a Guiness Stout ice cream for St. Patrick's Day, which was delicious.

Avocado at the Carpinteria Avocado festival here locally - not bad, but not something I would go out of my way to buy. Nothing beats my favorite - Chocolate malted crunch!!

They also have lavender ice cream at Bubby's Gelato in Encinitas, near San Diego.

garlic ice cream at the garlic festival..

and cheese ice cream

can't fathom what foods could have scared you so much in the Czech Republic -- yes, there is tripe soup, but that is about it.

Food-wise it is a pretty conservative place -- although I would never eat a Czech version of a foreign dish like pasta for instance, or Chinese, as other posters have commented -- definitely not the sort of place that would have savory ice cream (sorry, but there is no peanut butter in the CR). I'm guessing it was chesnut, plum or gooseberry (and that is pretty adventurous -- usually it is only strawberry, vanilla, chocolate and pistacio).

Durian gelato in Houston: scarily authentic (it had that "hot" feeling when you ate it) but not really my flavor. I have to say that it doesn't smell though.

Wasabi ice cream in Asia: I didn't dare try it b/c I can't do spicy, but I wondered whether it would have the same in-the-nose burn.

Smurf ice cream & gelato in Europe: not a strange taste, but it was a surprise to me when looking at the gelato case and seeing a generic blue Smurf next to a label. It turns out that Smurf tastes different in different countries; it's generally a fruity flavor in a particular shade of blue. IMO, Czech Smurfs taste the best.

Floral flavors anywhere: These are somewhat common nowadays, but they were pretty rare 10yrs ago. Never liked them though.

I was shopping in an asian market and happened to look at the ice cream section. I saw a cheddar cheese and corn ice cream. I wanted to try it but hubby said I was out of my mind. I also saw a bright purple ice cream made with taro root and a red bean ice cream. Very interesting.

I was served beer ice cream w/ soft pretzel spoons as the desert when I dined at Schwa in Chicago.

In Hawaii recently, I had sour cream gelato that was incredible.

I've got a number of more interesting flavors I want to try out once I get my new ice cream maker up and running -- but nothing like the lobster, garlic, etc. mentioned here. Why waste perfectly good ice cream just for the novelty factor?

Lavender, just sour...not much of lavender.

Let's see...I've had avocado gelato that was pretty tasteless, crab ice cream that was actually really good, and a few of the asian ice creams, pandan leaf, black sesame, and taro. All good.

It's actually not weird in the conventionally understood sense of the word. But -- I recently made some mint oreo cookie ice cream for myself, and...I sort of overdid it with the peppermint extract. It was still tasty, it was just...very very strong mint. About halfway through my first bowl, I realized that it was exactly the same strength as an Altoid candy.

So i had effectively made Altoid flavor ice cream.