/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>14393238

Casu Marzu is the ultimate troll, surpassing even Aussie-level bants. For Sardinian teenagers waiting tables as summer jobs, it is a rite of passage to convince a tourist to sample this "authentic, traditional cuisine." Local gastronomical authorities play along, for the sake of preserving the joke for the next generation, but the fact remains that not a single Sardinian has ever consumed this literal, actual garbage.

The amazing thing is the audacity of the prank. Granted, lots of tourists in exotic locales end up eating fecal matter served by sniggering kids under the nebulous guise of "regional specialties". It's almost expected for a restaurant's "special curry" to reek of the latrine. But the Sardinians brazenly tell the tourists exactly what Casu Marzu is: old, festering, rotting cheese, filled with wriggling maggots. And yet these daring dagos somehow convince the feckless Yank or Euro to take a bite anyway, by exploiting a combination of (1) the vacationer's sense of adventure, and (2) garden-variety liberal guilt.

As the victim grimaces and swallows, the rest of the staff eagerly look on from the kitchen and place their bets: how long will it take for the feckless "guest" to sprint to the bathroom and retch up this putrid death-curd? And yet the rubes will never complain, so long as they got an Instagram photo of this "dish" to prove how worldly and well-traveled they are.

Well played, Sardinia. Well played.