What’s Your Worst Food Experience While On Vacation?

Chris Perez
Chris Perez
Chris is creative director of Left Right Media branding and marketing agency in Austin. As a photographer and former engineer, Chris enjoys covering topics at the intersection of art and science.
published Jun 20, 2013
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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Have a conversation with someone after they return home from a trip and, if they are a foodie, you’ll likely hear them rave about all the great food experiences they had. The fresh fish! The tapas! The 5-course meal! The coffee and pastries! There’s an excitement and attachment to enjoying the unexpected. Sometimes though, things are unexpectedly bad. Do you have a bad food experience while on vacation?

For me, it all starts with my love for the chocolate chip cookie. I’ll debate it out with anyone who doesn’t put it in their top 5 for American inventions. I’ll cast questionable looks to those who prefer crunchy over soft-baked cakie-ness. I’m a equal opportunity cookie lover though — snickerdoodles, sugar, gingerbread, and molasses varieties all have a bronze bust in my dessert Hall of Fame.

This love for the cookie means I always seek it out for dessert — at a restaurant, a fair, or the shopping mall. You can imagine then my excitement when, at The Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, I saw countless number of fair-goers wearing big iced cookies around their neck. 

I didn’t hesitate to buy one. Heck, since I was going to be there awhile, I considered buying two. I’m sure the seller was taken aback by the big grin I no doubt must have had putting the necklace around my neck, adjusting the edible pendant front and center. 

It’s the 21st century, so I wanted to make the moment memorable with a picture. I handed the camera to my wife, and instructed her to take a picture of the first bite, which I had already pre-conceived to be flavors of moist gingerbread with vanilla frosting. I then grabbed off a piece of the cookie, put it in my mouth, and then…click.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Ewww! That picture just documented one of the biggest food disappointments I’ve ever had. The cookie tasted like pure unadulterated licorice. Licorice! Bane of my existence in any form, liquid or solid. 

Good thing I had a giant mug of beer to wash it all away. From that day forward, I’ve never quite trusted a German cookie. Their pretzels, sausage, beer, and just about everything else, though? Pure gold!

What’s your worst food experience while on vacation?

(Images: 1.Handmade Pictures/Shutterstock; 2. Chris Perez)

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Travel