Food that I will Never Eat Again - Seal Flipper (1 of 3 foods)

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This is a fun post, let's play together 😃 What food have you ever eaten that you will never eat again?

I start first, then you add your "never again" food in the comments below. OK? 👌

Disclaimer: These are just my personal reactions to the food. It merely reflects my inexperienced taste buds and lack of exposure 😅 


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😱 Seal


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In the 1980s, I arrived in the island of Newfoundland in Canada's rugged coast where the Atlantic ocean thunders on to the rocky shores and sheer vertical cliffs of eastern North America. We arrived for university with not enough money to complete the programme, but with no lack of gung ho and naïveté. We were just going to wing it and cross the bridge when we come to it.

So, we were pretty excited when we stumbled upon mobile stalls in the summer that sold seal meat.


Credit: Public domain photo

You see, there is the centuries old annual seal cull in Newfoundland during the start of summer and seal meat is widely sold. Seal meat is part of the traditional diet here, especially among the Inuit people (Eskimos). The locals (mainly Irish) also like seal flipper pies 👈 click

Curious about the new experience, we immediately bought home a seal flipper. The thick meaty paw (fur and bone removed) was a bit bigger than a man's palm and cost just CDN1. We thought it would be a great culinary adventure and would help stretch our meagre savings as well (at that time, SGD1 was worth merely 60 cents Canadian).

When we got home, we dusted the seal paw with a sprinkle of salt and slotted it straight into the oven just like the way we would bake a steak. We waited, and soon the whole kitchen was filled with an awful, pungent smell that quickly spread to the living room.

Our house mates staggered into the hall, wondering what the smell was about. (Our house mates just arrived from Hong Kong and Malaysia were equally unaccustomed to the strange smell.)

The best way I could describe it is, it smelled very similar to that odour when we squish a cockroach 😨 Really.

But, we bore with it as we were poor and weren't about to throw away a big piece of meat.


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When it was cooked, we took it out of the oven. I held my breath and gingerly sliced a sliver of the deep red, almost purple colour meat. I chewed on the tender skinny strip of meat, but it was very fibrous, almost like a juke rope. And, the overwhelming taste of cockroach was strong.

That pungent smell of cockroach was deep in the fat interlacing the meat.

Sadly, we had to reluctantly abandon the large piece of good meat.

But, that wasn't the end of the story.

As someone who long prided myself for being able to "eat anything", I wasn't going to give up so easily.


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Fast forward 3 years.

So, after graduation and before leaving beautiful Newfoundland, I bought another seal flipper and had another go at it.

Unfortunately, it was a repeat of the exact same scenario from three years ago.

I surrender 😂

This is how F.D. Ommanney, zoologist onboard the R.S.S. Discovery II's 1930s expedition to the Antarctic, described it in his book South Latitude: "Seal meat is coarse and black and sometimes it has a sickeningly oily taste which catches you suddenly unawares and which I think is quite loathsome."

And now, over to you 😃

What food would you "never eat again"?

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