Well, to be perfectly truthful, I did taste gooseneck barnacles some 30 years ago but let’s face it, I don’t have any memory of what they tasted like.  So this summer, while visiting Portugal, I read about a town that specialized in the things (percebes in Portuguese).  And yes they are barnacles, but really long ones.  I think they were cooked, but I wouldn’t want swear to it.  At any rate, what you do is snap the top off and a mussel-like thing emerges.  The taste is briny and strong, like a powerful whiff of a fishing harbor, a little like a mussel or a an oyster.  Delicious, if you like sea critters, which I do!

Went for dim sum at the Golden Unicorn today and, in following up the durian-banana ice cream I tasted at Morgensterns, I ordered what turned out to be a durianfilled fried pastry.  And now I can definitively say, I don’t like durian.  The texture of the pastries was terrific, a delicate, crispy exterior and a luscious creamy interior but the flavor?  To me it tasted like vanilla custard scented with rotting onions.  And some people apparently like this stuff.