Visitors contribute their cilantro stories...

Page: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  

 "The REAL "C-word"
Is it me? Or, did cilantro seem to burst on the scene in the 1990s? (I won't ask where it was before that because I DON'T want to know.)
My first cilantro experience came at a Thai restaurant in Hawaii. My brother & I--both 20-something at the time--were dining together. We ordered an interesting-sounding soup as a starter. This was Mistake #1. (Eating it was Mistake #2.) It arrived & we each ladled some out into our bowls. What transpired next was epic. We took our near-simultaneous first sips & shared a "moment." By this I mean to say that the same horrified look passed across each of our faces at the same time. The look begged the question, "What in God's name IS that horrid flavor??" (We may have even uttered variations on this question aloud.)
The other overriding flavor in the soup was lemongrass. It was like dueling banjos of distaste. We choked down a few swallows apiece just to be polite. We nicknamed that soup, "Pledgearrhea." This word's prefix refers to a popular brand of furniture polish, & the suffix to... well... cilantro.
The word "pledgearrhea" has since lived on in infamy in our family. Used generically to describe ANY awful flavor--but usually any awful flavor caused mainly by cilantro--it has successfully crossed over from a neologism into everyday use. I encourage you to adopt it into your own lexicons as well.
My second experience with cilantro came in a Chinese restaurant, AGAIN with the soup! This time, upon my first sip I could not restrain myself from calling out, "Oh my God! It tastes like raw sewage!" much to the chagrin of my tablemates (co-workers & a boss, no less). What can I say? The distaste engendered by cilantro was more important in that moment than any job. You understand.
This brings me to my penultimate point. The words we cilantro-haters use to describe its taste are unusual in that, has anyone here ever actually eaten: soap, doll hair, burnt rubber, shoes, plastics, tin foil, furniture polish, diarrhea, or raw sewage for that matter? Has anyone ever actually "sucked on a penny"?? And when those stray gobs of shampoo trickle down into the corners of your mouth in the shower, don't you just wash them out instantly? How is it that we can use the names of things classically inedible to describe cilantro? What I have come to understand, thanks this supportive community, is that if you hate cilantro, it's that easy.
Last thoughts. 1)If I'm feeling strong, I can torture myself to go up to cilantro in a grocery store & sniff it. It actually triggers the gag reflex in me. It gives me a headache and ruins my day. Masochistic, I know. 2)The Americanization of cilantro--now seemingly EVERYWHERE--has led me to change the way that I order Mexican food. I've always been something of a salsa whore, but I now have to forcefully mandate, "NO PICO!" 3)Where is ihatecardamom.com?? My horror stories surrounding this other soap analog are also legendary--right down to believing with all my heart that the kitchen had accidentally dropped a hotel-sized mini soap cake into the curry at an Indian restaurant, which I then bit into. Is it me, or do others here taste a STRONG, horrid similarity between cilantro & cardamom?
Thanks for listening. Thanks for sharing YOUR stories. Glad to know that I am not alone out there.
"




 "I went out to supper and ordered curry. I couldn't eat it. I sent it back. They told me nothing wrong with it. The sensation was like having a piece of tinfoil in my mouth touching a tooth filling along with a mild taste of soap. I found the website tonight after trying to order 2 different things in a local restaurant and the nitwits added cilantro to both. I ended up with a crappy salad, a ruined date and a bad mood.

Cilantro is essentially toxic. Right up there with nausea!"




 "My worst experience with cilantro doesn't actually involve eating it, just smelling it. Last summer, they re-landscaped the area around my college dorm. The first week of classes, I was walking home, and smelled something so unimaginably vile that I knew it had to be my most-hated food, cilantro. I assumed someone was cooking with it nearby, but the smell persisted for days, then weeks, and I realized it must have somehow been planted in the landscaping beds. I even went looking for it, hoping to uproot it while no one was watching, but I couldn't find it, and I had to endure months of nauseating walks home until the first snow arrived and mercifully killed all the plants, cilantro included."





 "So I'm in Viet Nam in 1967 teaching school and building wells. And we have Vietnamese cook who is hiding from the RVN and the VC. He cooks VN food, which is basically soup, every night on a small kerosene stove in a small room that 3 of us lived in. The Vietnamese call cilantro, Chinese watercress, I think. But the combination of kerosene and cilantro and his bad cooking drove me off to the Chinese restaurant in the town. So I hate cilantro, with or without the kerosene."




 "About 10 years ago I was making a new recipe and it called for cilantro. I had never cooked with it before but I do enjoy most fresh herbs. Well, I didn't really care for the smell while chopping it and then I took a bite and what a terrible experience!!! My saliva became very slick and soapy tasting and all I could smell was sweaty armpits. I get a milder version of this whenever I walk into a restaurant where cilantro is being used. I just cannot eat anything with cilantro... I don't think this is an allergic reaction as much as a chemical reaction. (if that makes sense.) But I think there must be some metabolic connection with everyone who has these severe reactions. "





 "So I was eating pico de gallo at my favies restaurant and out of NOWHERE bam the digusting taste of cilantro destroys my whole meal. It too the staff 3 hours to coax me out of the bathroom. I also had to be taken to the hospital because I tried to bleach my tongue...dont try this please."




 "My second year in college I was trying to expand from the basic college diet (ramen and easy mac) to the advance college diet (ramen, easy mac, chips and salsa, frozen pizza) since I actually had a fridge. In my search for good salsa I bought one that my dad recommended. As soon as I opened it I was assaulted by that awful caustic smell. Fortunently it hasn't hit midwest restaurant yet, but yuck. Somebody has some in our fridge once and I swear it permeated everything in there. "




 "My FIRST cilantro story...not necessarily my WORST
About 20 years ago my sister and her two boys were visiting me from Connecticut, and I took them to a very nice Mexican restaurant in Dallas, one that I had frequented and loved. That night in one of my dishes ,
( that I had ordered on many other occasions)I tasted an overwhelming taste so vile that I couldn't get it out of my mouth fast enough. I looked at my dish and saw little green leaves throughout it. Leaves that had NOT been there on other occasions. It was about that time that the Mexican restaurant community began to throw massive amounts of cilantro into EVERY dish. Although there may have been small amounts cooked in , they were not in the huge doses they began to foist on us. I am so tired of it."




 "I didn't mind cilantro until I had it in a salad. I couldn't place the taste of the repulsive weed until I remembered that there was cilantro in it. Now the taste triggers my gag reflex."




 "Last year, I was a member of a leadership organization on campus at the college I attend. Now, the meetings that I had to attend for said organizations were, to say the least, hellishly and intolerably painful. One night, I had great hope for a meeting because I was promised home-made salsa and chips. As I dipped my first chip into the tempting bowl of what I hoped to be salsa-riffic goodness, I was in utter dismay once the chip reached my mouth. My guess is that the person simply put a bunch of liquified cliantro into a pot, threw in some red food coloring and a tomato and called it good. Needless to say, I was devestated by this unfortunate turn of events, and am glad to have found a community with which I can share my heartbreak and tragedy. Thank you. "





 "I have always disliked the taste of cilantro and refused to eat anything that contained it--why not just grate soap onto a salad or salsa? In any case, imagine my excitement when a Washington Post food writer (some years back) wrote about HER distaste for the herb and said that, figuring she was not using it appropriately, she called JULIA CHILD to discover the proper use of it. Julia Child reportedly said she NEVER USED THE STUFF because she hated it. Vindication is sweet.

Couldn't we have little cards made to hand to waiters, saying "NO CILANTRO, PLEASE!"?"




 "I can't stand this overpoeering soapy substance. And sadly, it's gaining in popularity. It's become the new "Sun dried tomatos" or "portabella mushrooms" in it's trendyness. I've learned to tolerate it a bit, since it is in EVERYTHING, but damn it, I should not have to tolerale this foul food."




 "
Thank God I found this site! Today while at work I got what I thought was going to be a damn good salad, and wouldn't you know it, it was infested and infused with this absolutley disgusting satanic herb. Well I finally decided to go online an see what the heck is up with this vile plant. In particular if it is used in metal cleaners.

Why metal cleaners? Well, when I was younger I used to work in a super market deli. We used metal cleaner to clean the slicer and various cutting utensils. THAT was my first experience with this rank smell. Of course the metal cleaner was toxic so you needed to rince items very well after using it. (Think Kramer on Seinfeld cleaning his deli slicer.)

At any rate, for the absolute longest time (until about a year ago), whenever I would get food out and would smell and taste this flavor I wanted to throw up. I was thinking that the store or restaurant had used this metal cleaner on something and then didn't rince it off very good (or at all) when prepping their food. So I figured I'm being exposed to this toxic crap on my food.

Well as I said, I finally learned that this smell/flavor is actually cilantro (so presumably I wasn't being exposed to metal cleaner on my food).

Needless to say, I am still absolutely disgusted by the stuff because I will always remember that chemical smell of that toxic metal cleaner.

So... I tried to pick out what I could of my salad to eat, but wound up having to toss it. Why ANYONE would like this stuff and what to put it in their food is beyond me. Even if you hadn't ever had the initial experience I had with this smell, it STILL has a distictive chemically rank smell and taste.

May cilantro rot in hell where it was first grown.

"




 "I have hated cilantro since my first expeirience with it At age 12. My mom was hosting a moroccan themed dinner party with her friends and I was helping with the prep of some of the dishes. One of my jobs was to chop A LOT of this green herb that I did not know what it was at the time. After about 1 minute of chopping I started to feel sick from the smell of it. I told my mom and she thought I was being silly. I finnished my choping job and could not get the smell of the cilantro off of my fingers for like 2 days no matter how hard I scrubbed. This stuff gets into your poors! Needless to say, I have hated cilantro ever since. Also, anyone who says just pick it off your food obviosly does not realize that it is the most invasive flavor ever. If it touches your food your screwed.
"




 "I'll never forget my first encounter with this vile weed. It was about 12 years ago in a Thai restaurant in Chicago, where I was dining with a friend. We had ordered our entrees which came with a small soup starter. Two small cups of soup arrive at our table. It appeared to be some sort of clear vegetable soup with some green herbs floating in it. I tasted my soup, and to my surprise, something didn't taste right. I thought, "what the Hell?" to myself and tasted it again. "Bleh! What is IN this?" It tasted like someone was cooking it in a freshly bleached Teflon pan that the coating was flaking off of and it got into the soup somehow (this is how I descibe the wretched taste of cilantro to this day). Confused about where this horrible taste was coming from, I picked out one of the green leaves and sniffed it. UGH. Then, I put the leaf into my mouth. Holy crap. This one of the most disgusting things I had EVER tasted! What IS this stuff? I mean, I love vegetables and herbs, but this has to be some sort of mistake! Lucky for me , my friend had the same reaction, so I knew there wasn't something wrong with me.
I later found out what the culprit was. It has crossed my path many times since. Indian food, Mexican food, I can't tell you how many times I've gone out for Mexican, and literally had to fish around the bowl of salsa for a molecule of tomato that wasn't touching a leaf of cilantro. Here's a horror story: The very last time I went out for Mexican, my food came out to me COVERED in cilantro! All over the whole plate! I wanted to cry. I might as well have been eating with a tweezer. I have to remember to request "no cilantro", and pretend I am allergic to it (my tastebuds are, anyway).
I HATE this stuff! I can't even believe that people would even consider this a food product. That's how HORRIFIC it tastes to me. I have actually bonded with people over this topic. CILANTRO SUCKS!!! >:P "




 "Cilantro has been following me for years - it is laced on meals I never expect for it to invade...and yet it always appears, like a nusance. I just can't take it any more. I shouldn't feel ashamed to say "I don't want ANY cilantro in my meal" when I go to a restaurant, and servers should respect that and not pass it off as green onion. I am on to their games...do I have to lie and say I am allergic...NO...I just HATE the taste. It is the most atrocious food know to man. Even if it is sprinkled on my plate my gag reflexes start up. It is just digusting. Restaurants just STOP it - there is no need to put people through that pain!

Thank you."




 "I don't know about you all, but I was infinitely relieved to find this supportive, sensitive, cilantro-hating community because NO ONE I KNOW believes that I have a right to hate cilantro! "Oh, no', they say "Cilantro is amazing! It's so delicious! You're crazy for not liking it! Just have some more in that burrito, I know you'll come around." HA! I discovered that I hated cilantro after trying for two years to love the food at our most popular local restaurant, a Mexican fast food place called Anna's where everything is laced with cilantro. "It's funny," I said, "Normally I like quesadillas but these taste like they're fried in soap and stuffed with aluminium foil!" Finally I unearthed the culprit: cilantro. Turns out I have this evidently not-so-rare genetic predisposition that makes my taste buds turn against cilantro. But Thank The Good Lord, I'm not alone! "




 "My first encounter with CILANTRO was about two weeks after Christmas 2005.My youngest son was concerned about my health,I am a diabetic and he had lost his father March of 2005.His dad had been a diabetic also.My son Nicholas had bought me a book for Christmas called Natural Cures for Diabetes.The book was written by Dr.Cass Ingram.I began to follow the diet in the book which included CILANTRO.I found the taste was not so good and the smell was pretty much the same.Never the less,I used the CILANTRO anyway.To my amazement ,from December until today I went from 183 pounds down to 147 and my blood sugars were never so low .It was like a miracle cure.My sister who I share a home with can't stand the taste or smell ,but she doesn't seem to mind my using it because it works wonders.It is sort of like Buckley's cough medicine,it tastes bad but it is good for you.Tell your diabetic friends about it they will thank you for it.Another hint for health drop the refined sugar which contains chemicals and bleach it is a man made poison.To sweeten anything use pure honey.It is easier on the blood sugars."




 "I fear my story is like so many others - I was introduced to this evil substance without my knowledge or assent.

I was in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on assignment with the government agency for whom I worked. At lunch one day, I tasted something foul in the meal I was served. Not wishing to set off an international incident, I politely inquired as to the offending dish's ingredients and was told what the main ones were, all of which seemed fairly normal. Never having experienced this particular awful taste before, I was at a loss to identify it. I had the meal boxed to take out and returned to the embassy see if anyone there could identify what the nasty stuff was. Soomeone finally was able to discern that this meal was indeed laced with something called "cilantro".

To this day I will ask restaurant servers to ensure there is none of this disgusting stuff in my food."




 "Hi. I am Samantha from Italy. I read about yuou in a poplular national newspepar. I wuold likr to tell you about my story and my anger with cilandtro. In Italy they call HIM coliandro. I call him crazy parsly.
First of all, I met cilantro in portugal, in a restaurant. We wanted to have a sea food soup, and we werw starving. Soup on the table, our mouth happy about the food, our spoon in the soup, our moth on the spoon. My face turned pale. I puke the soup. I can even explain. Now I can't stay in a room with cilantro. even with an open window. Thanks all. S. "





Page: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  

Please contribute YOUR cilantro story.