Remember when eating exotic food meant grabbing a dish of sweet and sour pork from your local greasy spoon on a Friday night? My, my, how times have changed, and thank goodness too!

A wonderful side benefit of travelling is losing the fear of never-tried-before foods. Delve outside your comfort zone and local food court for a taste of the authentic. Read through these amazing foods, and get ready to tick off the ones you have tried. Have you been to their place of origin?

Durian
Stink city, but don’t let us put you off it. Officially dubbed the world’s stinkiest fruit, this beauty is banned from some public places in Southeast Asia. A cross between a cactus and a cheese, the interior is surprisingly smooth and creamy. Look out for the street stalls dotted around Malaysia, pull up a stool and buy your fruit by the kilo.

Almas caviar
Ok so there are plenty of variety of caviar sold in your typical, local supermarket, but the Almas is whiter and more flavoursome, and therefore more expensive. Hailing from the very rare albino sturgeon, it takes about 20 years for the fish to mature and produce eggs, and is only found in the southern Caspian Sea where the water is unpolluted.

Bird’s nest soup
The real stuff is exactly that – a broth made with solidified strands of the swift bird’s saliva. Ewwww! Though nothing to be scoffed at, this rare food is jam-packed with nutrients and has medicinal qualities to make your skin glow!

Haggis
Scotland’s national dish, haggis is made from all the good stuff – sheep’s liver, lungs and heart minced with onions, oats and spices, and stuffed into a sheep’s stomach casing. Oh goody! What did granny used to say – waste not, want not!

Matsutake
Prized in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese cuisine, this stocky mushroom with a spice-aromatic odour is a highly sought after mycorrhizal mushroom. What does that mean exactly? Fungus roots in Greek apparently.