Eating isn't so bad--the pulp has such a luxurious silky texture, and is actually nice at first to taste. Just smelling it isn't so great. But the worst part is the next five hours, where you burp durian flavor, which is a lot like. . . well, rotten onions, only sickly sweet. Ack.

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Durian doesn't taste good to everyone. It tastes precisely as it smells to a fair percentage of the population, including me. Eeew!

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I love durian! It is truly an acquired taste, though. The first two or three times I tried it I hated it, but I persisted. Now I am in love with it. The same formula seems to apply to most of the people I know that now love durian.

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I must say I am a bit turned off to read about you writing about durian in such a negative (and rather disgusting) light without having actually tasted it. It is an acquired taste, but I'm imaging the response if someone that hates raw oysters told you what it tasted like to them and you were paraphrasing it as its introduction. It's essentially the same. Pretty ignorant.

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actually shawna is right, its just an acquired taste and doesnt smell like what you've described haha... the same goes to blue cheese

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This is one fine example of how one man's (woman's) meat is another's poison.

For the majority of Southeast Asians (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam etc), it definitely does NOT smell like what you've described! It's distinctive for sure, and every time I smell it I'm reminded of the CREAMY, silky sweet (sometimes refreshingly bitter, depending on variety) flesh that just hits the spot. No different from eating an intoxicating slab of chocolate.

This does illustrate a bigger lesson though. You Americans: *STOP* pushing your "democratic" and culturally imperialistic ideas on the rest of the world, just because *YOU* think it's the best idea. We like it *our* way, no matter bad *you* think it is.

Especially when your big-bully government gets tens of thousands of people killed, but not limited to that. Your government is also right now trying to force a Free Trade Agreement down Malaysia's throat.

Be as it may that this is a food blog and I don't want to detract from that, but this just touches a raw nerve and hope you Americans know what your government is doing.

Durians rule.

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