Disgusting Food Museum Malmö

What’s truly disgusting, and why?

In Malmö, there’s an exhibition that tackles this question with 80 delicacies from around the world, and a barf bag included with your ticket. Some museums display art. This one showcases cheese crawling with live maggots, fermented shark from Iceland, and turtle soup from overseas, while explaining why these foods are perfectly normal to the people who eat them. The Disgusting Food Museum in Malmö is easily one of the most unusual museums in Europe.

What began in 2018 as a temporary exhibition at Slagthuset has since become a permanent fixture in the Swedish port city, now welcoming around 20,000 visitors each year. A second location of the Disgusting Food Museum can be found in Berlin.

Behind the exhibition is a clear idea. Disgust isn’t universal, it’s deeply cultural. What’s completely normal in Swedish cuisine, like surströmming, the infamous fermented herring, makes people elsewhere wrinkle their noses. And the reverse is just as true.

So what can visitors expect?

Around 80 exhibits from all over the world are packed into a small space, ranging from Mexican tree ant larvae to Sardinian casu martzu, a cheese traditionally aged with live maggots. Each exhibit comes with background information, how the dish is prepared, what cultural significance it holds, and why some people consider it a delicacy while others find it unbearable.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

• Hákarl, fermented Greenland shark from Iceland, one of the strongest-smelling items on display
• Casu martzu, Sardinian sheep’s milk cheese with live fly larvae
• Surströmming, Swedish canned herring with a legendary smell
• Balut, a partially developed duck egg, a street food staple in the Philippines
• Escamoles, Mexican tree ant larvae, often called “insect caviar”
• Shirako, cod sperm, considered a delicacy in Japan
   

One of the most memorable parts of the exhibition is the scent jars. Visitors can choose to experience the smell of some of the most pungent items firsthand, though not everyone ends up appreciating that decision. At the tasting bar, about 20 of the featured foods can actually be sampled. Anyone who makes it through the full tasting earns a certificate. Reactions range from “amazed” to genuine nausea.

Our tip: Go on an empty stomach. If you really want to make the most of the tasting bar, don’t eat too much beforehand. And as for the scent jars, open at your own risk.

The museum was created by Swedish psychologist Samuel West, who had previously founded the Museum of Failure. Together with entrepreneur Andreas Ahrens, he opened the Disgusting Food Museum in April 2018, initially as a temporary exhibition at Slagthuset in Malmö, where it immediately attracted international attention. Since the summer of 2021, the museum has been permanently located at its current site.

The museum is located at Södra Förstadsgatan 2 and is easy to reach on foot. It’s about a 13-minute walk from Malmö Central Station and around 10 minutes from Triangeln Station.

If you’re traveling from Copenhagen, you can take the train across the Öresund Bridge, the journey takes about 35 minutes and brings you directly to Malmö.

There is also plenty of parking available in the area around the museum.