Lollipop & Banana Hammock Invade SE Asia: ADVENTURE DINNER: LUANG PRABANG, LAOS

We went to a restaurant called Tamarind to check out their cooking class and noticed something on the menu called the "Lao Adventure Tasting". Of course we had to try it. Made a reservation and deposit for the following night so they could get everything from the local market. It was definitely an adventure...

One of the waitstaff was Aussie and she came out to explain each dish and how it was prepared. We accompanied our dinner with numerous shots of Lao Lao (local "whiskey" made of sticky rice).

The first course was a tasting of different jeows (kind of like pastes), powders, and veggies that they eat with sticky rice. These dishes are actually what they eat on a daily basis. Very cheap and most are from various river weeds.

River weed jeow, fish jeow, kind of like an olive jeow, 2 powdered river weeds, river weed soup (tasted like some kind of comfort food to us, with spice), pork skin lettuce wraps (on the right), and more river weed. We also had dried mushrooms to snack on, with chilis, garlic, and kaffir lime leaves. We actually really liked this part. It was all surprisingly good. We almost finished it.

Then this showed up...

Starting on the top left and going clockwise... baby frogs sauteed with basil, chilis, peppers, and garlic; fermented fish; moth larvae; soy cracker; shredded, dried pork; raw fermented pork (normally they eat it raw after 20 days, but they put it briefly on the grill for us); fermented fish intestines; ant larvae omelet; and baby bees. In the middle is a bean sprout salad. Not pictured: Water buffalo and riverweed soup with some sort of wood that we were supposed to chew on that made our entire mouths numb, some large flower stuffed with pork, egg, and spices, and dried buffalo skin.

For the record... we each tried everything. I (Kyle) pretty much liked it all. My favorite things were the frogs and the stuffed flower. The only thing that I did not like was the fermented fish intestines. Really gross stuff. Sheri said it tasted like gasoline and i can't disagree. Sheri also liked the frogs, but really had a problem with the baby bees. She struggled with the moth larvae, but actually ended eating the entire thing because she saw some of the waitstaff laughing at her.