You really have to appreciate Riker in this scene. He's actively working to make sure that he can blend in more with the Klingons, that his behavior on their ship will be a pleasant surprise to them. And he was quite successful at it. Even the duty of eating Klingon meals, which the other senior officers around him found disgusting, he approached with gusto and made every effort to enjoy them instead of just tolerate them.
Best part is, anything he couldn't stomach could be recycled anyway and tried again as something else. Given carte blanche to study Klingon food, why not? The only hiccup was the "live" part of their diet.
So Klingons eat animal hearts, live insects and blood pie? As someone who lived in the Philippines. I can say a Klingon restaurant will be very popular in the Philippines and Malaysia. Edit: No, I'm not Taiwanese. I just happen to live in Taiwan at the moment.
This scene inspires me to eat with the same gusto - poking and stabbing at my food, lifting food above and into my mouth, gesturing and pointing with my spork, speaking with food in my mouth, picking up and eating from different dishes, and grunting and nodding approval.
I wish Worf had been in this scene, he could provide an insight to the food, and have a small mention of how his parents used to research Klingon food when he was a child, since he would refusedto eat any human food!
It makes me wonder how much Worf would have actually have known though, having not lived in the Empire at all. He was probably only exposed to popular dishes, or perhaps Klingon food that was tamed down by other Earth chefs. Similar to eating Chinese food in the US, very little of it is actually authentic Chinese, and unless you actually lived/go to China in non-touristy areas, you'll never be exposed to the real deal.
He lived with Jewish parents. The only thing they were good at was blood pie, according to another episode. My guess his childhood was Shakshuka and stuff like that.
Riker was considered the closest thing to a fellow Klingon to Worf after this episode, which is why he asked him to assist his suicide when his spine was crushed. I wish they did not forget this when Worf got married. They should've had Riker as the best man.
i do this all the time. If im going to go to a restaurant with my family or a date, ill go first with a few friends and we'll order different meals. Then we all share it out and decide what we like and dislike. Good way to know what you like and dont make yourself look silly by ordering something you dislike.
@@jesuszamora6949 It's not bad at all. French food can be quite delicious, if you know what to pick, same as in every other country. He was probably making a joke on the fact that the most known foods that are loved by the French are Escargots (cooked snails) and Cuisses de grenouille (frog legs), which grosses many people out, given where the food originates from, but both are actually quite delicious.
@@Xylarxcode Honestly, I don't see the big deal people make about those two. And I'm not even sure how froglegs would be gross. Looks like your typical deep-fried food. Snails wouldn't be my first port of call, but it's not like they're eating tarantula or something.
Obviously you've never been to an authentic *Hawaiian* family luau. The food will fight back! Especially the baby octopi poke. Those are known to grab your utensils to fight you. Mmmmmm.... 🐙🍴
I find Picard and Pulaski's disdain for the food hilarious, given that later into the franchise, more and more people decide to eat and enjoy Klingon food, so much so that one of DS9's popular restaurants is the Klingon Restaurant.
Same as all so-called 'exotic' foods. Call it disgusting now, but after a few days of it, you'll wonder how you ever considered your old fare to have any flavor at all.
I imagine most people started out small when it came to the Klingon restaurant, try a couple of things that don't look as bad, enjoy them, and then start to experiment more with it.
The next generation is definitely a wussy version of the federation. Deep space nine shows much heartier individuals, and how the Klingons frankly have more guts in dealing with things than humans. The Enterprise has a very snobby view of the world, and when Captain Kern decided to shake things up they acted like a bunch of whining children.
Now this is one way to enjoy and appreciate another culture by enjoying the cuisine. You can often be delightfully surprised at how delicious an experience it can be.
The rokeg blood pie, heart of targ, and the gagh looks especially appetizing. You add a little blood wine, and some Romulan ale and Saurian brandy to wash it down with, maybe some Vulcan plomeek soup for the first course, and a little Thalian chocolate moose for desert. Dang, now I'M getting hungry!
Man, Riker is acting like Klingon food is KFC! Damn, did he smoke weed before that meal or is Klingon food really that good? Will you please pass the Serpent Worms, so I can find out!
I mean all food is weird when you think about it too much. "Would you like some Hen, sir? It is a small bird that we have smothered in the fluids of its excrement, rolled in a plant that we have ground up, and thrown into a fire. You may submerge it in fat on the fire, if the flame is not to your liking." = Want some KFC? Baked or fried?
kxmode: In the toilet bowl, or whatever they use, it will look like numbers 3, 4, and 5. I imagine Klingons would have more stuff to excrete than just pee and poop, since they have weird redundancies in their physiology.
@Kevin McDougall It's a very potent alcoholic beverage that is best served warm and may or may not contain blood (it's never been officially confirmed). Few non-Klingons are capable of tolerating its effects; it is said to be twice as strong as whiskey.
Fandom Goggles on -As a cook myself I believe that Klingon cuisine is mostly raw and fermented meats +vegetables are present as Riker seems to be crunching on a cabbage like vegetable.
So much of that stuff looks good. Partially because they made it out of "real" food stuff that was just unusual. Like Pipius claw actually being chicken feet, just with one toe removed and covered in glaze instead of sauce. Lots of that stuff probably was super edible.
I am very interested in knowing what they ACTUALLY used to represent the Klingon food!! I'm sure there's a Star Trek lore text on the subject somewhere....
memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Pipius_claw edible to humans and is in fact a delicacy in certain parts of the world. memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Heart_of_targ I doubt you would want to eat that uncooked. memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Bregit_lung you can eat that but you have to know how to prepare it. memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Rokeg_blood_pie you should enjoy that.
I love the scene, I love the food (mad props to the mad props department!), disappointed with the title there. Nasty?? Riker did not seem to think so, and the Klingon restaurant on DS9 was always busy, so opinions may vary. And as it all basically looks like Southeast Asian cuisine, from tentacles to live meal worms, and in some cases Cajun food as well, with a dash of Norwegian, German, and British... so different tastes. I figure some calamari with some blutwurst and some black pudding, and any Klingon would be happy!
I want the backstory on where the writers got the inspiration. My guess is they went to a traditional Asian seafood restaurant that has live seafood in tanks around the dining area. One of my favorite places was like that before the pandemic forced them to close.
If I remember right, Riker's dad was quite militaristic. I can see him making young Will do field training eating foraged bugs, uncooked seafood, and all sorts of barely edible things to train him to survive. Calories are calories and learn to turn off your revulsion triggers..
@@winstonmarlowe5254 I agree, though I have heard that it is possible (if not advisable) to survive entirely on meat, but not on vegetables. A combination of both remains probably the best of all.
What they used for Klingon food in this scene, according to Star Trek Cookbook and property master Adam Sims (and yes, Frakes really ate this crap): Pipius Claw: Chicken feet but with the middle "toe" cut off and put in a base liquid. Bregit lung: Animal tripe (layer of stomach lining/skin, sometimes used in breakfast sausage) Gagh: Oriental udon noodles with soy sauce Rokeg blood pie: pumpkin pie mix with fruit juice and beets Heart of Targ: real animal heart and other organs such as beef kidney Rakta'jino: Real, aged java with espresso beans. Mollusk: Just octopus tentacle, boiled or cooked. Zilm'kach: fried apricot.
"This bird seems as though it has been lying out in the sun for quite some time" "You are aware that we cook most of our foods?" "Ah, I was told to prepare for that... I will try some of your burned, replicated bird meat."
The food on that table looks like it would be eaten by a Klingon on a diet. You're expected the type of people they were to have giant plates with large portions of meat and large steins of drinks.
Apparently a number of humans go on to appreciate Klingon food as the two peoples get a bit more familiar with each other. Bashir is shown to eat it unflinchingly during his date in one episode.
Jacky the Clown In reality it's even worst than that...my grandfather told me that (I'm European) in the worst period of WW2 food was so scarse that in large cities people would end up eating mice (the lucky ones) and even boiled tree bark or leather shoes.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy sit down to dinner. The waiter brings them their food, still wriggling on the plates. Kirk: "What is this? Bones, give me readings." McCoy: "It's raw Jim!" Spock: "Would you and the good doctor care to share my big salad captain?"
No judgments. I've worked in the grocery business for many years and I've served plenty of people who bought their hot lunches. To each his or her own.
+TheErilaz Their sacrifice wouldn't go unnoticed by Scandinavia, that's for sure. Surströmming I can stomach, but I haven't tried Gammelost yet. I'm from Sweden so it would be the feast of the year for these warriors.
"We know so little about them." - says the Captain who beat the felgercarb out of three Klingons and killed a fourth in his quest to clear Worf's name.
You might as well post clips of other ST TNG food scenes. My other favorites are 1) Riker scrambles an alien egg for the gang, which only Worf enjoys, and 2) Geordi & Worf try fettuccine alfredo on DS9 (?), which Geordi says "tastes like liquid polymers", but is enjoyed by Worf. Sorry, I don't remember from which eps are those scenes...
Don't forget the scene where they are debate in Picards quarters on whether they should/should not save the lives of millions of people of a pre-warp civilisation, that Picard laid on a buffet for the senior staff
Funny us humans could find a way to stomach that. RIker is clearly enjoying it, and Bashir mopped up a plate of the stuff in DS9, so clearly we are capable of liking that.
From what I understand, the thing about Klingon food is it's roughly kept as close to raw or simple prep. Qagh/Gagh is one of the ones where the serpent worms are kept alive and then prepared in a variety of ways....some are prepped with diluted blood (which, depending on what kind of blood they're fed changes the taste) and then fed a myriad of herbs (which are poisonous to the worms). Some items like qul dir (fire skins) have a short cook time before you must eat it, and then everything else rides the line between marination and fermentation. They even have a loose variation of haggis, in which the food is partially digested in an animal, and then the animal is killed and said food is harvested out of the stomach of the animal. The only real issues are that Humans are physically inferior to Klingons, so they're only able to enjoy so much of it. For example, Arsenic is something a Klingon can eat, but a Human cant. Klingons also have redundant internal organs (multiple livers and kidneys), so they're probably able to process or filter out a lot of toxins and poisons, which would allow them to endure harsher conditions and subsist off of what food they may be forced to scrounge up.
