The late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain first made his mark with brash and unflinchingly honest writing about the New York restaurant scene. But his most lasting contribution was his global exploration of cuisine and culture through his TV shows “Parts Unknown” and “No Reservations,” which exposed viewers to dishes and entire worlds they might not have otherwise seen. It produced years of enthralling television, but not everything Bourdain ate around the world was worth a second bite.
Bourdain traveled to Iceland for a 2005 episode of “No Reservations,” where he tried the well-known local dish hákarl. But he ran into trouble before the first bite, expressing his shock at being told not to touch fermented shark meat with his bare hands: “This is food I’m expected to put in my stomach, but they don’t think — I shouldn’t touch it with my fingers?”
Undaunted, Bourdain took a careful bite of hákarl and had only a few words to describe fermented shark: “Oh man. That is … unspeakably nasty. This is probably the single worst thing I have ever put in my mouth.” He followed local advice to eat the shark meat with brennivín, an Icelandic caraway seed liqueur with its own acquired taste, which Bourdain assumed was “to wash out the taste of stinky shark. … Cheers to that.”
Why do people eat hákarl?
The story of hákarl and why Icelanders eat it goes back to the island’s first human presence, Viking colonists in the 9th century. They settled in a land where they had to catch most of their food and preserve whatever meat they could for future meals. They soon discovered that the flesh of the local Greenland shark was poisonous when fresh, yet when fermented in the dirt for several months and air-dried, it became safe to eat — though not necessarily enjoyable.
Hákarl was one of the most bizarre things Anthony Bourdain ever ate, which is easy to see without even taking a bite. The reason Bourdain was told not to touch it is that hákarl’s pungent stench of stinky cheese and ammonia is so powerful it’s difficult to wash out of clothes and off human skin, which is why it’s usually eaten with toothpicks.
As one can imagine, a food so stinky you can’t touch it isn’t very popular, even among experienced palates. Gordon Ramsay was also not a fan of hákarl, which he nearly regurgitated after one bite. And even though it’s available year-round, and is an important part of the traditional winter festival of Þorrablót, many Icelanders still avoid eating it — even if they appreciate its cultural and historic importance. Their Viking ancestors likely would have chosen something more delicious, too, if they could.