Like Newman, I too have an aversion to a vile weed that I would not eat even if it was “deep-fried and covered in chocolate sauce.”
I am not alone. There is an entire online community that agrees with me. Together, we proclaim: I Hate Cilantro. As one of the site’s haikus puts it:
Oh, coriander.
If “pure evil” had a taste?
It would taste like you.
Indeed.
I’ll admit that I’m somewhat suspicious of some of the flavour profiles my fellow cilantro-loathers have ascribed to this pungent mess of an herb. I taste soap — a sickly floral punch-in-the-nose — but other describe it as “worn out rubber bands,” “doll hair” and even “rotting meat” (how these folks know what any of these taste like is beyond me).
And lest you think this is just some wacky collective, an internet tribe of oversensitive ninnies, you should know that the doyenne of French cuisine in America, Julia Child, hated it too. In a 2002 interview with CNN’s Larry King, she had this to say about cilantro (and, possibly, arugula):
I would pick it out if I saw it and throw it on the floor.
Poor floor.
