Three Destinations to Get a Taste of Extreme Foods in Australia, New Zealand and Iceland

One of the best ways to make your travels memorable is to eat something completely off-the-wall. Some foreign destinations make that easy thanks to immigrant populations that influence local cuisine, unusual flora and fauna and historical necessity. Here are some great places in Australia, New Zealand and Iceland to let your taste buds go where they've never gone before.

Australia

Being close to Asia gives Australia some wonderfully spicy treats. Though you can get many Asian flavors in any major U.S. city, it's still worth diving into any Indian, Thai or Indonesian restaurants you can find.

But it's Australia's abundant wildlife, one odd import and its fruit that really will wake up your palette. It's not at all unusual to see salt-water crocodile, emu and kangaroo on the menu. At the Australian Heritage Hotel in Sydney, I found all three as pizza toppings. Less common is camel, which I found turned into schnitzel at the Wharf Precinct in the Northern Territory outpost of Darwin.

Let's say you're a vegetarian. There's still plenty for you in Australia. See, the country's really not all desert. The province of Queensland is incredibly lush. There, you'll find the Cape Trib Exotic Fruitfarm a few hours north of Cairns. The farm hosts tastings, where you'll learn about and sample a pretty overwhelming array of unusual fruits - takes notes and photos if you want to remember them. On my tasting list was black sapote, dragonfruit, jakfruit, sapodilla star fruit, mangosteen, soursop. And I'm leaving out many.

New Zealand

Travel writers have slammed the culinary efforts in New Zealand. That amazes me. It's home to some great local lamb and outstanding seafood. And it's certainly a great place to find unusual flavors. Like Australia, Asian immigrants have brought the spice. But even aside from that, you'll find plenty of ways to stretch your list of unusual foods.

During a bus ride from Nelson to Franz Josef Glacier, our driver told us all about the possum pie at the Sandfly Cafe in Pukekura. Despite his assurances that it's "easy to eat," I was the only one to get a personal-size pie stuffed with stringy bits of possum. It's not great nor revolting - but it's fun to say you've eaten possum.

On the South Island, whitebait is another local favorite - and possibly a test of a traveler's willingness to try anything. They're recently hatched freshwater fish, usually mixed in with egg. Whitebait is fairly pricey, probably because it's fairly labor-intensive to catch them.

Finally, Queenstown is a great stop to try unusual bites. There, I discovered that Aggys Shack is the only place I've ever seen where you can order a whole smoked eel. I say skip the fish & chips (even thought they're also tasty) and pick the eel and a nice order of fresh green-lipped mussels.

Iceland

Talk about a harsh, barren place: According to Wikipedia's statistics, less than one percent of Iceland's land area is arable. The rest is lava flows and glaciers. That makes for some gastronomic ingenuity. Take hakarl (pronounced "howker"). Early settlers in Iceland were so pressed for food that they had to discover ways to make the toxic flesh of the Greenland shark fit for eating. Here's what they did - gut the shark, bury it for a few months, exhume it, cut it into strips, let it hang a few months more, and enjoy. The result is rubbery and smells like cat urine. Fortunately, it doesn't taste that awful. But it's hardly a culinary delight - except as a notch on your extreme foods belt.

Then there's the excellent smoked trout available just about everywhere in Iceland. What makes it unusual? Well, it's smoked over fires produced by burning dried lamb dung.

There are also certain places where Icelanders eat pickled rams testicles and entire sheep heads with the eyes still planted in the skull.