Harper Lee said you can’t know a man until you stand in his shoes. I say forget the shoes, just drag him to a restaurant and see what he (or, as the case may be, she) orders. Is he one of those who spend up to 45 minutes scouring the menu in the hope of discovering a whole new food group? “Bring me something I’ve never eaten before,” said one of my friends to a bemused waiter who looked at the rest of us for assistance. We finally convinced our friend to settle for a steak.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who don’t even bother to open the menu; they know what they like and that’s good enough for them. Why risk trying something new is their philosophy. No wonder then, getting a group of people to amicably decide on a restaurant can take all the negotiating skills of a high-level diplomat, a fact to which I can personally testify.

So what makes some of us more adventurous than others where food is concerned? A big part of it is cultural: even the most gastronomically experimental amongst us would draw a line at fried scorpion, a regular street food in China. Or at smoked bats, a delicacy in Indonesia, deep fried grasshoppers in Thailand, and dog meat in Korea. Kangaroo and crocodile are on the menu in Australia and Inuits have a whale of time with blubber. As they say, one man’s meat is another’s poison. And speaking of poison, the Japanese will pay huge amounts of money to sample a portion of Fugu, the extremely toxic puffer fish – you can’t get more adventurous than that!

Of course, deciding whether a particular food is exotic, run-of-the-mill, or plain revolting is basically just a matter of opinion. For a vegan, the fried eggs you had for breakfast may be just as nauseating as the idea of fried tarantula (a Cambodian treat) is to you. It’s like how many of my friends (generally male) think nothing of chomping down brain masala, siri paya (with bits of tongue added for extra texture), and that grand orgy of organ meat, the kat-a-kat (made with all those parts of a goat you don’t even want to think about).

Yet these same omnivores shudder at the idea of sushi, detest Chinese food (unless it’s been doused liberally with ketchup), and refuse to try anything that isn’t served out of a karahi or off a skewer. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since, according to a study by the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, men are generally more conservative when it comes to food than women.

And then there’s nationality. Surprisingly, as a nation, it’s the boring Brits who were ranked as the most adventurous foodies. Yes, according to a survey by a travel company, the people famous for such scintillating cuisine as roast beef and mashed potatoes (hold the pepper please) have been voted the most likely to “sample local and exotic food, when travelling.” So much for stereotypes!

Though we don’t have a survey to prove it, I’m willing to bet my last kebab roll that when it comes to the least adventurous, Pakistanis would win hands down. Far from ‘sampling local and exotic food,’ most seek out the closest desi restaurant as soon as they step on foreign soil. (Someone I know tramped halfway across Paris to find chicken karahi!) Others go a step further and actually carry tins of nihari, haleem, and biryani on anything longer than a daytrip. Students, for example, don’t leave home without their mom’s home-cooked fare tinned for their time abroad. Not surprisingly, even our cricket team has tikkas, kebabs, and other desi goodies flown to wherever they are playing, courtesy Dilawar Cahudhry of Tandoori Kebab Centre in Southall, London.

However, not all Pakistanis are food neophobic (the official term for the fear of trying new foods). Where once the only option for anything non-desi was the highly localised Chinese, today urban dwellers can pick anything from Thai and Italian to Korean and Japanese. The fact that such restaurants exist at all is testimony to our growing awareness that there is life beyond the chicken tikka.

Not that anyone’s forcing you to pick up the chopsticks and dig into the kimchi. If you prefer the tried and tested over the new and (potentially) disgusting, that’s your call, especially at a pricey restaurant where being experimental might cost big bucks. But then again, if you don’t try the kimchi at least once, how will you know whether or not you like it. It might be just the thing your taste buds have been waiting for.

Think about it – isn’t it time you embarked on a culinary adventure?

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