Smoked Baby Clams in a Tin: The Nightmare!
Well, this one takes the cake as being the most inedible, least palatable, scariest looking food I have ever SEEN or reviewed. This little tin of smoked baby clams may be considered delicious to some but it was easily the most revolting food I have ever come across! My girlfriend of all people picked this out for me, along with a CAN OF SNAILS I just had to put back out of fear and revulsion. Besides canned tuna, any form of canned seafood has always been an oddity to me. The canned salmon and other fish just didnt have the same appeal as a can of tuna. I thought they just made this stuff for Asians or people who just love to drink down salty fish brine with a side of slimy sea-meatz. Sardines are acceptable only because they are commonly eaten on pizza. My father has a favorite snack of pickled herring and sour cream which he slurps down with a glass of whiskey: barf-o-rama! Well, I dont think anyone could stomach these without at least an IV of morphine flowing through their arms!
Just looking at them is scary. They are strange little creatures which have a big shit filled sac and chewy extremities. Reminds me of when I went to a fancy restaurant in the Hamptons and ordered a bowl of Steamers only to find that “I dont know what Steamers are!?”. The baby clams are covered in oil and have such a horrendous smoke scent to them that it is nauseating. You can even get close to these things without both smelling or catching a glimpse of these things, and by then it is too late. I actually did not want to even taste one of these because it appeared from the tin that some of the oil had seeped through which could have indicated spoilage. On top of that, there was no expired by date printed which really called into question the freshness of the product.
I went ahead and sampled one with the goading of my girlfriend saying that I owuld be letting down the internet community at large. I picked out a rather small one and popped it in. What an explosion of greasy, salty, smoky, alien tasting mess met me! The texture was understandably chewy, and the flavor was mostly like a smoked fish. I suppose if I had grown up on these or if these were served on a cracker it may have been different. They might not have even been that bad! I mean, they tasted like they were supposed to but the look of them and the smell were just horrible. In fact as I am writing this 2 days later I can STILL SMELL THE CLAMS. It reminds me of when I did a dissection at the beginning of PT school and I could smell the cadaver in every food I ate.
Well, there was only one thing left to do with the food and that was take it, put it in the food processor, and blend blend blend. The result was a green paste that looked jarringly close to the Jamaican Chicken Patties I just reviewed!
