Being Filipina, ‘bizarre foods’ are just not that bizarre to me.

Bardo executive chef Edward Storey plating up reindeer pate.

Growing up, one of my favorite dishes was something we call dinuguan. In English it means blood stew. Simply described dinuguan is pig intestines (and sometimes ears and snout) simmered in a gravy that’s made from the pig’s blood and garlic. Sounds extreme, but it’s not. It’s delicious. We also ate cow tongue and squid and all sorts of various meats.

Now, we don’t eat dogs or cats, contrary to the ignorant beliefs of some. But we are the culture that also gave the world balut, which is a duck embryo that has almost developed inside its shell; a delicacy back home. Filipinos joke that when they see people disgustedly eating it on shows like Fear Factor or Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, they think, ‘Mmm, I could go for that right now.’ I have to say, though, that on the visit I made back to the Philippines in my early teens, this delicacy when presented was too much even for me. But today, I would eat it in a heartbeat.

The reason why is this: Eating and enjoying the cuisine of another culture allows you to understand its people in a way that nothing else can. For me, eating dinuguan (which I knew my white friends at school would never touch) made me feel, in a way, more Filipino.

At Bardo, they get this; the boundary-breaking effects of food. In fact, balut was featured on the menu of their first Bizarre Foods Dinner last year, as was Rocky Mountain oysters (bull’s balls) and oven-baked tarantula. Somewhere in the world, agreed owners Karl Dornemann, Eric Stevens and executive chef Edward Storey, people eat each of these things–so why not serve it up here all nice and delicious?

The meal was such a success that they decided to make it an annual event. Of course, being Filipino and used to bizarre foods and smug and all, I had to go.

This year, Bardo’s Bizarre Foods Dinner drew a crowd of about 30, which I’m told is smaller than that of the first one. (“They got a little yellow,” said Dornemann of a group that canceled that morning.)

I sat next to an Australian named Henry who told me that he had grown up hunting crocodiles and eating Aboriginal food, so he too was undaunted by the menu, which at $55 included six courses and six cocktails.

“Most people don’t think about the fact that their food comes from animals or even from the earth,” Henry said to me. “They want it produced and packaged in such a way that fits into their comfort zones.”

Reindeer pate.

When I asked Dornemann what inspired the meals, he too said, “We figured out how ridiculously beneficial this is, not only to the environment, but you. Bardo literally means change or transition.” So of course it makes sense that in this space we are challenged to change ourselves with food–not just physically but mentally and emotionally, as well.

The first course presenting that challenge was reindeer pate with toast points, house-made pickles, marbled egg, and sweet red onion. The consistency was much like liverwurst, observed one diner. And similarly the flavor was rich and nearly as lush as foie gras.

It was served with a raspberry sake with aloe vera juice, which tasted to me like lychee martinis I drank in Honolulu and to a girl at my table like the cactus juice cocktails she had had in Sedona.

Octopus and scorpion soup.

Next was the octopus and scorpion soup, which I found to be the most challenging of all the courses. If the first course was a slow pitch to ease us into the game, this one was the curveball to remind us we’re in the big leagues. The soup itself was tasty–carrots, potatoes and celery in a spicy broth; the kind of soup you’d eat to knock out a cold. And the octopus was not a problem, either–any lover of traditional Japanese cuisine would love it.

The scorpion was the challenge. Though Storey chose younger scorpions this year for a softer quality than those he served at Bizarre Foods Dinner Part 1, the feeling of it in your mouth is still all spindly legs and sharp claws and tail. Then, when you bite it, the scorpion explodes with the most distinct and pungent flavor, unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. (I nearly spit out I was so surprised by it, and a few people skipped the scorpion altogether.) “Briny” and “nutty,” was how most of the diners tried to describe it. “Medicinal,” one person added. “Kind of tastes like locusts,” said Henry, unhelpfully.

Jellyfish salad with ants.

Unfortunately that’s the thing with taste (and with this taste in particular), it cannot be described to someone who has no other frame of reference.

The soup was served with a tamarind soda with grass jelly, dragonberry rum and ginseng extract, garnished with a baby bamboo. The bamboo was mostly flavorless, but the drink was sweet and good, and by this time I knew I was going to be drunk by the end of dinner.

Next up came jellyfish over mixed greens topped with toasted leaf cutter ants and a sesame sherry vinaigrette, which was ridiculously good. The jellyfish didn’t taste like much; “kind of like mushroom,” according to one diner. But the ants were absolutely robust in flavor–smoky, even–and their texture gave the salad a crouton-like crunch. Without knowing they were ants, one could easily snack on them like they were bacon bits.

Meal worm and cricket pizza.

Alongside, we drank a concoction of Hangar One vodka, sour, amber agave nectar and basil seeds, which tasted a lot like bubble tea lemonade (if you like that sort of thing). The basil seeds looked and tasted like soft little fish eggs swarming around in my drink, and I was very much not into that.

The flatbread pizza with meal worms, crickets, roasted red pepper, feta cheese and red onion that came next “looked like it was left out,” as someone joked. Nevertheless, it was very delicious, as well–the crust, feta and basil all sung. The meal worms had little taste, but the crickets made up for it. “They have such a thin shell,” said one diner, “and such a subtle flavor, it’s almost like a Rice Krispy.” Indeed, the crickets went down easy, with a flavor similar to the scorpion, except much less intense and much more pleasant.

The “Bloody Mary” with which the pizza was served was my favorite of all the drinks; spicy and strong rather than sweet and tangy. The bizarre food twist: a marinated octopus salad that’s meant to be swirled around in it and swallowed toward the finish like an oyster shooter.

To cool off our palates, we had absinthe sorbet next; the exact opposite of the Bloody. If you’re not a licorice fan (and I, myself, am not), you probably aren’t going to enjoy this or any other absinthe presentation. But it’s fun and makes you feel French, so try it if you haven’t.

Braised lamb's head.

Course five was my favorite of the six-course meal: braised lambs head with roasted root vegetables and grasshopper cornbread. When initially served, the lamb looks like pulled pork or you know, lamb, and most of us were disappointed that we didn’t actually get to see the head. But it smelled and tasted amazing, served with beautifully roasted parsnips and carrots. The cornbread, though also delicious, was a little too heavy alongside such a rich and weighty meat. (The crushed grasshopper barely came through in flavor, but it gave the cornbread a grittier texture.)

When our mixed reaction reached the kitchen, Dornemann came out and said, “We do have brains and eyeballs… Who wants those?” Everyone raised their hand. As we waited, we sipped a cocktail of gooseberry blackstrap molasses rum, silver rum and soursop toffee. Delicious, with caramel and chocolate flavors, but again this accompaniment made the course a little too heavy.

Brains.

All of those nitpicky details, however, melted away, when I tasted the lamb eyes and brains, which were the reason this course was my favorite. The eyes were rich and tender, covered in a dark, delicious pan sauce similar to the kabayaki sauce that comes on unagi at a sushi restaurant. The brains, on the other hand, tasted a lot more like chicken liver, but better–more subtle and yet also more complex. I was sorry that we had gotten such small portions of eyes and brains, to be frank. I’d have eaten an entire plate of them over sticky rice and been beyond content. Next to me, Henry was devouring not only his portion but that of two others who were a little shy of the idea.

“I grew up on this,” he told us. “This was my childhood comfort food.”

Eyes.

It was charming, to be sure, watching this gentleman eat brains with that kind of nostalgia–the way one might eat a sloppy joe. Like how I would eat dinuguan.

Finally, with almost no room left in our stomachs, we were served dessert: chocolate-covered Madagascar hissing cockroaches with raspberry creme brulee. It was a little anti-climactic, being much more chocolate than cockroach (although one diner was lucky enough to have a live one in hers). But they were certainly cute, served like little lollipops. In them I definitely caught a touch of that distinct insect flavor that was in the scorpion and crickets. The dessert drink that came with ended up being a much more delectable final note to the meal: a peanut butter martini with a jelly shot and chocolate-flavored maraschino cherry garnish. I could’ve drank three, but of course, as predicted, I was plenty drunk already.

Chocolate covered cockroach.

Over the course of our meal, my table of eight–none of whom I knew previously, and many of whom did not know each other–felt like old friends. We shared stories from our travels. We talked about The Big Lebowski and why we love Norfolk. A few of us even shared a shot of Jamison between our third and fourth courses.

In my inebriated state, I described to Henry a scene in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy in which a little white boy looks at a little African boy and think, ‘Gross, he’s drinking cow’s blood!’, while the little African boy is looking at him thinking, ‘Disgusting, he drinks cow’s milk!’

It’s funny and interesting, the things that make us different. But it’s these cultural barriers that allow us to see each other as foreign and thus lesser or wrong. And it is that divide that fuels people to war with each other.

But with a little taste of one another’s cultures, maybe we could get over all that.