The moment every traveler lives for is the native dinner where,
throwing caution to the wind and plunging into a local delicacy
which ought by rights to be disgusting, one discovers that it is
not only delicious but that it also contradicts a previously held
prejudice about food, that it expands ones culinary horizons to
include surprising new smells, tastes, and textures. Lutefisk is
not such a dish. Lutefisk is instead pretty much what you'd
expect of jellied cod; it is a foul and odiferous goo, whose
gluttonous texture and rancid oily taste are locked in spirited
competition to see which can be the more responsible for
rendering the whole completely inedible. How to describe that
first bite? It’s a bit like describing passing a kidney stone to the
uninitiated. If you are talking to someone else who has lived
through the experience, a nod will suffice to acknowledge your
shared pain, but to explain it to the person who has not been
there, mere words seem inadequate to the task.
