Disgusting Food

Museum

Food is so much more than sustenance. Curious foods from exotic cultures have always fascinated us. Unfamiliar foods can be delicious, or they can be more of an acquired taste. While cultural differences often separate us and create boundaries, food can also connect us. Sharing a meal is the best way to turn strangers into friends.

The evolutionary function of disgust is to help us avoid disease and unsafe food. Disgust is one of the six fundamental human emotions. While the emotion is universal, the foods that we find disgusting are not. What is delicious to one person can be revolting to another. Disgusting Food Museum invites visitors to explore the world of food and challenge their notions of what is and what isn’t edible. Could changing our ideas of disgust help us embrace the environmentally sustainable foods of the future?

The exhibit has 80 of the world’s most disgusting foods. Adventurous visitors will appreciate the opportunity to smell and taste some of these notorious foods. Do you dare smell the world’s stinkiest cheese? Or taste sweets made with metal cleansing chemicals?

Exhibited delicacies include:

  • Surströmming – fermented herring from Sweden.
  • Cuy – roasted guinea pigs from Peru.
  • Casu marzu – maggot-infested cheese from Sardinia
  • Stinky tofu – pungent bean curd from China.
  • Hákarl – well-aged shark from Iceland.
  • Durian – infamously stinky fruit from Thailand.

Visit us

Malmö, Sweden

October 29 – January 27
Slagthuset, Carlsgatan 12.

Hours

Wednesday – Sunday: 12:00 -18:00
Outdoor tasting: Surströmming,  Icelandic shark & Durian
Wed-Fri 17:00, Sat & Sun 13:00 and 15:00.

Prices

Adult: (18+) 185kr
Student/Senior: 150kr
Children: three children enter for free per adult.

Slagthuset (the slaughterhouse) is only a three-minute walk from Malmö central station, and there is plentiful parking in the area. We are just across the bridge from Copenhagen, and yes, Danes are also welcome. The gift shop sells a selection of unusual drinks and snacks, and there is a very good restaurant (no, it is not disgusting!) in the same building.

Events

Taste one for the Team is a team experience designed for groups of 6 or more adults. Challenge your colleagues or friends to a unique tasting that no one will ever be able to forget. Prices start at 300kr per person and include admission. Please contact: booking@disgustingfoodmuseum.com.

Slagthuset offers excellent meeting and conference facilities. More information: slagthusmmx.se

Contact

General inquiries: info@disgustingfoodmuseum.com
Group bookings, events: booking@disgustingfoodmuseum.com
Press: press@disgustingfoodmuseum.com

Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Team

Andreas Ahrens

Curator & Museum Director
Most disgusting food eaten: Hákarl from Iceland, fermented shark.

Samuel West

Curator & Chief Disgustologist
Most disgusting food eaten: duck fetus cooked in its egg from The Philippines.

Emelie Andersson

Master of Design
Most disgusting food eaten: Polish sauerkraut drink, cabbage in a bottle.

Rebecca Ribbing

Director of Research
Most disgusting food eaten: brain omelette in Mexico city, Mexico.

Testimonials

  • I wish we had Casu Marzu in my day!

    William Shakespeare


  • I especially loved the bull testicles! 

    Gollum


Media Mentions

  • Welcome to the world’s first exhibition devoted to foods that some would call revolting. The museum’s name and its contents are pretty controversial — one culture’s disgusting is another culture’s delicacy. That goes for escamoles, the tree-ant larvae eaten in Mexico, or shirako, the cod sperm eaten in Japan, or bird’s nest soup, a Chinese dish of nests made from bird saliva. The name is meant to grab visitors’ attention, but that’s the point that West says he’s trying to make: Disgust is a cultural construct.
  • It’s easy to read the museum as a culturally insensitive house of culinary horrors — people (who are not me) in places (that are not here) eat that? And sure, there’s not not a gross-out factor, as evidenced by the name. But West told me the actual mission is the opposite: By really diving into the world of disgust, he’s hoping he can change the way people eat, and maybe save the world.
  • Disgust is considered one of the basic human emotions, much like Pixar’s movie Inside Out showed us. It protects us from disease by making us avoid unsafe food— and yet while the emotion itself is universal, the food that we classify as “disgusting” is not. And that’s exactly why Swedish Samuel West and Andrea Ahrens created a museum dedicated to disgusting food from everywhere across the world.
  • The main objective is to make it fun, interesting and interactive," said West, who explains that the exhibition is quite expensive since about half of the dishes are replaced every two days.
  • The name of the museum leaves little suspense on what will be there. On the menu, eighty culinary specialties that the world does not envy.
  • Have you come across a breathtakingly horrible food and thought ‘that belongs in a museum’? If you haven’t, that’s probably because you’ve never come across a durian. Or any of the other items belonging in the Digusting Food Museum. That’s right, there is an institution archiving all the weird and horrible foods being consumed around the world.
  • The unusual attraction will exhibit some of the most divisive dishes from around the globe, from rotten shark (a delicacy in Iceland) to south-east Asia’s infamously foul-smelling durian, a type of fruit so pungent it’s banned on public transport in Singapore.
  • Äckelmagad? Då ska du nog undvika Slagthuset i Malmö i vinter. Där visas nämligen ”världens 80 äckligaste maträtter” upp: Tjurpenis, ost med levande larver eller hákarl – isländsk surhaj.
  • Which is worse, the stomach-churning stench of Sweden's fermented herring, the rotting-flesh reek of a Thai Durian fruit, or the pong of Iceland's rotten shark? When the Disgusting Food Museum opens in Malmö at the end of next month, you can judge for yourself.