Anthony Bourdain was not afraid to try even the most disturbing-looking, smelling, even still-beating foods (he famously once ate a still-beating cobra heart). In fact, he was known for his eagerness to fully immerse himself in unfamiliar cultures by sampling what many tourists would consider sketchy dishes. Many times, he was pleasantly surprised upon tasting something that initially may have given him the creeps, but this wasn't the case when he ate fermented shark meat.

Hákarl is an Icelandic delicacy that is commonly served during a mid-winter heritage festival called Þorrablót. The foods served during the festivities tend to honor early preservation practices that ancestral Vikings would have used for their foods. Hákarl is made from the Greenland shark, whose meat is poisonous when fresh, hence the need to ferment it in order for it to be edible.

Traditionally, the meat was buried, and it essentially rotted and released its toxins for two months before it was unearthed and hung to dry for another four months. Today, burial is optional, but either way, the brown, leather-like skin that develops on the meat has to be removed before it's eaten. Getting past the smell is the first hurdle, though, as hákarl exudes a robust ammonia odor, which many claim is a lot stronger than the actual flavor.

Bourdain didn't mince words During the episode of "No Reservations" in which Anthony Bourdain sampled hákarl, he described it as "unspeakably nasty ...

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