Above all else, the Weird Meat Project has a brilliant use of nomenclature. There's just something insightful, meaningful and thoroughly iconic about adding 'Project' to the title of a website. Immediately, it makes you think, "This isn't a crappy web diary about unicorn poetry, this is a project." Pure genius.
Over and above the stunning branding, the content is terrific. The Weird Meat Project is the journal of an ex-vegan from California. Having cast off the shackles of an all-curd diet, he now freely traipses around the world tasting bizarre cuisine. He tracks down the strangest food he can find - spiders, rats, parasitic fungi, etc. - and unhesitatingly digs in.
It's a compelling and original story, and, like with the competitive eaters, I'm strangely jealous. Although, just to be perfectly clear, I'm relieved it's not me. This man eats spiders so the rest of us don't have to.
Unfortunately, the nomadic nature of the Weird Meat Project entails infrequent posting, but it's worth the wait.
The pelican doesn't make the list? I mean, you've got to credit him with tenacity, at the very least, (it took him 20 minutes to swallow the darn thing) and... well, you know. Pigeon is a weird meat for a pelican.
Posted by: Anne | October 27, 2006 at 11:05 AM
For those that didn't quite follow that, Anne's talking about this disturbing story from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6083468.stm
(The World's Finest News Source...)
Posted by: Jared | October 27, 2006 at 11:18 AM
Interesting.
I don't know if the guy has tried them (his site is very large) but I would quite like to try penguin or polar bear as I suspect their fat makes them particularly juicy and tender.
Even monkey I'd give a go.
And yet, I'd probably prefer to eat my own hand than eat goat. What's that about?
Posted by: Lebowski | October 27, 2006 at 12:06 PM
Goat is delicious. It's really tender. In the posh part of Camden - the small food market down by the Lock (near Black Gull Books), there's a West African stall. They do a fantastic goat curry for under a fiver - really delicious.
Posted by: Jared | October 27, 2006 at 12:24 PM
Oh, also don't forget: this guy isn't the first person to try to eat his way through the animal kingdom. That distinction may or may not belong to the early 19th century English geologist, the Rev. William Buckland (1784-1856), who was famously eccentric for more than just his gastronomical impulses. He also, for example, collected corprolites (fossilized droppings) and made himself a table out of them, and was known for doing his field-work in his academic gown.
Wikipedia has a reasonably decent mini-biography up at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckland
The Oxford Dictorinary of National Biography has an entry that's much more satisfying, but requires a subscription to access.
Posted by: Anne | October 27, 2006 at 01:25 PM
Camden has a posh part?
Isn't that Brighton?
Posted by: Lebowski | October 27, 2006 at 04:04 PM
Wow. The 'posh part of Camden' is up by the Marathon Kebab Shop (notably for substances other than meat, for the most part). I love that. The goat curry is good though.
Posted by: Dan | October 29, 2006 at 10:07 PM