From jellyfish to miso ramen, Japan has some of the most bizarre ice cream flavors in the world, but a frozen treat that’s supposed to replicate the texture and smell of soft cat and dog paws is a bit too much, even for the Land of the Rising Sun.

Japan’s longstanding fascination with cat paws is not exactly new. To many Japanese feline lovers, cat paws smell like nice things (right from caramel crepes, to wheat and sunflowers) and their soft, smooth texture is considered mysteriously soothing. Cat paws are so popular that a couple of years ago, a company came out with a hand-cream that not only left the users’ hands as smooth to the touch as a cat’s paw, but also made their skin smell like it too. But now, the organizers of the 2017 Japan Pet Fair, are taking this obsession one step further with two unique ice creams designed to have the texture and flavor of cat and dog paws.

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Looking for an original Valentine’s Day gift? How about a special Kotoka strawberry hand-picked in Japan that comes pre-packed in a special gift box? It’s said to be very tasty, and it only costs $22.

City’super, a supermarket chain in Hong Kong, has come under fire recently for selling what many have called “the most expensive strawberry in the world”. Priced at 168 HK dollars a piece, these Kokota strawberries are apparently hand-picked to ensure that only the finest specimens hit the market, and flown in from Japan. They come individually packaged in plastic-covered paper boxes, complete with a straw nest and Styrofoam “sock”, to emphasize their exclusivity. Photos of the ridiculously expensive “designer fruits” have been doing the rounds on social media in Hong Kong and mainland China, with most people declaring themselves appalled by the display of decadence.

The supermarket, which advertises itself as a “mega lifestyle specialty store”, has responded to the negative feedback by saying that the retail prices of its products are based on a number of factors, including purchase price, transport costs, market conditions and product exclusivity. City’super representatives also added that the supermarket was merely trying to offer “more choices of premium fresh produce to Hong Kong customers”, and that the Kotoka strawberries were intended as special Valentine’s Day Gifts. After all, who doesn’t find a $22 strawberry romantic.

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Virginia-based  brewery the Veil Brewing Company has taken the dessert beer category to a whole new level with its innovative “Hornswoggler” brew, a a chocolate milk stout aged on hundreds of pounds of Oreo cookies that even has icing chunks in it.

They say Oreos go best with milk, but the guys at the Veil Brewing Company apparently decided prove that beer works too. And they hit it out of the park. After launching the Oreo-flavored brew on January 24, the 64 cases available sold out almost instantly. The company then sold what little they had left as on-draft at the brewery, in Scott’s Addition, Richmond. That didn’t last very long either, and now the brewery is getting bombarded with questions about the next batch.

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i-Creamy Artisan Gelato offers some of the most delicious ice-cream in Sydney, but it’s not their award-winning creations or the predominantly Asian flavors that set them apart from the competition. It’s the way they serve their ice-cream that has everyone talking about i-Creamy and their beautiful gelato flowers.

Who wants gelato scoops pressed onto a crunchy cone when you can feast on a delicious ice-cream flower instead? Judging by the crowd lining up outside the i-Creamy Artisan Gelato, in Sydney’s Central Business District, even on cold winter nights, and the popularity of i-Creamy’s Instagram page, nobody! Sure, turning an ice-cream into a work of art takes a bit more time than serving a regular gelato, but it makes people happy and they always come back for more.

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Pizza has long been regarded as the food of the people; It’s cheap, easy to make and tastes amazing. But that doesn’t apply to all pizzas. For example, a restaurant in New York City serves a pizza that only the 1% can afford. It’s priced at $2,000 and comes covered in strips of edible 24K gold.

The Industry Kitchen restaurant in New York’s South Street Seaport was inspired by the nearby Financial District, which attracts the wealthy from all over the world, to create the “epitome of decadence” pizza. It’s officially called ‘the fance’za’, but epitome of decadence sounds much more appropriate. This outrageously expensive treat consists of a black pie made with squid ink, Stilton cheese imported from England, Foie Gras and truffles from France, Ossetra caviar harvested from the Caspian Sea, edible flowers, and lost of edible 24K gold strips and flakes from Ecuador.

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In an effort to make women’s period more comfortable, Swiss confiseur Marc Widmer has come up with a special chocolate that he claims can ease cramps and has a calming effect on consumers.

Called Frauenmond (German for “women’s moon”), the Swiss chocolate created by Widmer’s company, Chocolate with Love, contains 60% cocoa and 17 different herbs from the Swiss mountains. Widmer, a famous pastry chef with loads of experience at top hotels in Switzerland, says he came up with the idea for Frauenmond three years ago, after meeting a peasant family from Grafenort who brewed a tea to alleviate female period symptoms, from the same 17 plants he uses. Interestingly, their tea was also called Frauenmond.

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Florencio Sanchidrián has been slicing Iberian ham (jamon) for the last three decades and today his name is synonymous with the Spanish delicacy. The 55-year-old is regarded as the world’s best ham slicer in the world, and he charges accordingly for his services – a reported $4,000 to slice a leg of ham.

Born in the city of Avila, Spain, Sanchidrián trained as a professional bullfighter in his youth, but eventually put his red cape away and moved to Barcelona to work as a waiter. One day, he started cutting ham and simply fell in love with it. He started taking jamon slicing courses, and before long, he was winning slicing competitions as well as national and international awards. Florencio is now known as an ambassador of Iberian ham around the world, and he tours the five continents “with a leg of ham under his arm” at least once or twice a year.

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If you love ramen and want to get paid for eating lots of it, I suggest visiting the Umakara Ramen Hyouri restaurant, in Tokyo, Japan. They will pay a cool 50,000 yen ($438) to anyone who finishes their giant bowl of delicious ramen in under 20 minutes, Easy money, right?

Well, they don’t call these things eating challenges for nothing, so it’s definitely not a walk in the park. In fact, in the three years since the Japanese restaurant introduced the challenge, only nine people have managed to finish the gargantuan dish in the allotted time. Legend has it that they didn’t eat for a week afterwards and never spoke the word “ramen” again. Nine is not that many, but at least it’s doable right? And here’s an extra incentive: if you think that 20 minutes is just not long enough to gobble this delicious monster, Umakara Ramen Hyouri is also willing to pay $236 to whoever manages to eat it all in 30 minutes.

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Featuring perfectly replicated seams, soles and shoelaces, as well as impressively realistic finish, these life-size chocolate shoes seem made of genuine brown leather.

The “Gentleman’s Radiance” chocolate line is the creation of master chocolatier Motohiro Okai of Rihga Royal Hotel’s chocolate boutique L’éclat, in Osaka, Japan. Each leather show measures 26 centimeters (10.2 inches) in length, and is crafted exclusively from chocolate, including the insole and laces. The shoes come in three different shades of brown leather – light, dark and red-brown – and have a realistic shiny finish which Okai achieved after a painstaking process of trial and error.

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Dutch beer maker De Prael Brewery claims to have discovered the holy grail of alcoholic drinks – a pilsner-style brew laced with ingredients that greatly reduce the chances of next-day hangover and leave drinkers feeling fresh.

Thomas Gesink, the owner of Amsterdam-based De Prael Brewery, says he came up with the formula for his revolutionary beer after being challenged to create an alcoholic brew that would allow consumer to go to work the morning after without having to deal with the symptoms of hangover. So he and his team of brewers started researching what ingredients they would need to add to achieve their goal, while making sure that they didn’t affect the taste of the beer.

While the exact recipe for this 4.5%-alcohol hangover-free beer remains a closely-guarded secret, Gesink revealed that the main wonder ingredient is vitamin B12, which prevents headaches. “It is actually the only vitamin which can be dissolved in water, and that is why you can brew with it,” he said. The unique beer also contains sea salt to prevent dehydration, ginger and willow fibers, which are known to have a cleansing effect on the body.

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“Who says that health foods have to taste bad?” That’s the question that inspired Italian cardiologist Dr. Valerio Sanguigni to create a tasty ice-cream with proven health benefits, including improved sport performance in youth.

It’s a known medical fact that can help improve heart health and prevent certain diseases, with some studies even linking them to living a longer life. Staples of Italian cuisine, like olive oil, tomatoes and red wine have been credited for contributing to the longevity of the Italian population, whose number of centenarians has tripled in less than 15 years. But despite their documented benefits, Dr. Sanguini believed that many antioxidant-rich health foods lost a considerable share of their properties before reaching people’s tables. He decided to solve this problem using ice-cream.

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In an attempt to create a special snack to go with their high quality beer, Sweetish brewery St. Erik’s has created the world’s most expensive potato chips.

Apparently, St. Erik’s didn’t think Lays or Pringles chips were good enough to pair with their ale, so they decided to create their own exclusive snack and price it accordingly. “St. Erik’s Brewery is one of Sweden’s leading microbreweries and we’re passionate about the craftsmanship that goes into our beer. At the same time, we felt that we were missing a snack of the same status to serve with it,” brand manager Marcus Friari said in a statement. “A first-­class beer deserves a first-­class snack, and this is why we made a major effort to produce the world’s most exclusive potato chips. We’re incredibly proud to be able to present such a crispy outcome.”

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When it comes to tasty food, nothing beats grandma’s cooking! Well, except maybe more grandmas cooking in the same kitchen, which is exactly what goes on at Staten Island’s Enoteca Maria, a charming restaurant that employs grandmas from various parts of the world, instead of professional chefs.

Enoteca Maria owner Jody Scaravella says that he came up with the idea of placing grandmothers in a restaurant kitchen about 12 years ago, after suffering a series of tragic losses. His grandmother, his mother and his sister had passed away within a few years of each other, and the idea of having an Italian grandmother in the kitchen just felt comforting to him. He got his first cooks by posting an ad in the paper seeking ‘Italian housewives to cook regional dishes’. “I was still building the restaurant then, so I asked them to come to my place to cook instead — I live in the neighborhood. And they came with dishes, and their husbands and a few grandchildren they were looking after for the day. The whole thing was like a Fellini movie,” Scaravella remembers.

But that was only the beginning. These days, the unique New York restaurant has a rotating staff of grandmothers from around 30 different places around the world, including Palestine, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Nigeria and Algeria. They are known as ‘nonnas’ – Italian for ‘grandmas’ – and take turns in cooking traditional recipes from their respective culture, offering patrons the chance to experience new and exciting dishes virtually every night.

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Andrew Dyhin, an Australian inventor and founder of the PotatoMagic company, claims that he has spent the last 12 years researching ways of transforming common potatoes into a cheese-like product that is completely dairy-free.

“The product is called chato – cheese potato. It looks like cheese and melts like cheese, but it is nothing but potato,” Dyhin says. While he won’t reveal the exact production process, he says that the potatoes are peeled, liquefied and processed with no added ingredients into a basic product that can be melted, sliced, turned into cubes or mixed with water and other ingredients to make dips, just like cheese. The PotatoMagic founder said that he is confident that chato can become a sustainable plant based alternative to cheese, milk, custard and even ice-cream.

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Chacho’s Taco, a Tex-Mex eatery in Corpus Christi, Texas, has been challenging people to finish a spectacular 4-pound All-Mighty Taco in under 10 minutes ever since its inception, 18 years ago. During that time, only 5 really hungry people have managed to do it.

The next-to-impossible eating challenge posed by Chacho’s Taco recently went viral on social media, after Norma Jean Toro, a Corpus Christi local, posted a photo of her struggling to eat the 4-pound behemoth made with a giant homemade tortilla and lots of beans, cheese, carne guisada, egg, potatoes and bacon. She failed to finish the taco, but won the admiration of the internet instead. Her post has been doing the round on social media around South Texas after receiving thousands of shares on Facebook.

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