Food for Thought

By C.J. Hirschfield

Over the course of a week, two Fairyland staffers attended two very different food events.

One was work related: Café manager Amber Swanson perused the annual Winter Fancy Food Show held in San Francisco, where we scout for new and healthy options for our café.

The other event—thankfully—was not work related: Our communications manager, Nancy Friedman, journeyed to Los Angeles for the Disgusting Food Museum exhibition.

Where do these worlds meet? Possibly in a product we’re considering for sale in our gift shop.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

“What are the next big food trends?” the Fancy Food producers ask. With 1,400 international exhibitors offering 80,000 specialty foods and beverages, Amber had an overwhelmingly busy day of tasting. She discovered an instant oatmeal product that she liked, tiny lemon bars that made her swoon, and healthy chips “that don’t taste healthy at all.” East Bay favorites Numi Tea and Semifreddi Breads were on her list to connect with as well.

From a personal perspective, Amber fell in love with a powerful ghost pepper sauce from Pappy & Company, and was amused but repulsed by Trump Hair yellow cotton candy. “I love America,” she says.

Pappy & Company barrel-aged ghost pepper sauce

And speaking of repulsion, Nancy had a wonderful time at the Disgusting Food Museum, which features 80 of “the world’s most disgusting foods,” and which continues at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in downtown L.A. through Feb. 17.

The Disgusting Food Museum originated in Malmö, Sweden, in 2018; the Los Angeles pop-up is the first stop on what may become a North American tour. The museum’s founder, psychologist Samuel West, asks: “Could changing our ideas of disgust help us embrace the environmentally sustainable foods of the future?”

Fried tarantula (with garnish) from Cambodia

Nancy notes that one of the purposes of the exhibit is to challenge our concepts of palatability. “I couldn't help coming away impressed by the inventiveness and resourcefulness of humans around the world,” she says.

Your ticket to the Disgusting Food Museum is a barf bag

Here are some international delicacies that she saw (and even sampled): surströmming (fermented herring from Sweden), cuy (roasted guinea pig from Peru), casu marzu (maggot-infested cheese from Sardinia), stinky tofu (pungent bean curd from China), hákarl (well-aged shark from Iceland), salmiak liquorice (licorice flavored with ammonium chloride, a popular Swedish confection) and durian (the infamously stinky fruit from Thailand).

Salt licorice from Sweden. (Photo via Disgusting Food Museum)

America’s contributions to the exhibit included Jell-O mold, Twinkies, Pop-Tarts and Rocky Mountain oysters, which are not real oysters.

And the Fairyland connection? We may, in our own Fairylandish way, merrily combine the disgusting with the whimsical as we make our first order for Magical Unicorn Poop, which is actually “colorful candy-coated chocolates packed in a tube.” 

Magical Unicorn Poop

Because, you know, kids love unicorns. And, as the best-selling kids’ book puts it, everyone poops. Even mythical creatures.

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C.J. Hirschfield has served for 17 years as executive director of Children’s Fairyland, where she is charged with the overall operation of the nation’s oldest storybook theme park.