Casu Marzu, a pecorino cheese and Sardinian specialty, surely wins among most disgusting cheeses of the world. The direct translation is “rotten cheese” and rightly so: blocks of otherwise beautiful Italian pecorino cheeses are purposely prepared to become the natural breeding grounds for nests of maggots—the natural harbingers of rot and putrefaction. As if pecorino wasn’t pungent enough…

Like many distinct ethnic practices and traditions, formaggio marcio, is a generations old culinary delicacy, with roots in familial history. The process of producing casu marzu, aka “maggot cheese,” is considered a process of finely metered fermentation. However regionally traditional the consumption of maggot-laced cheese, it hardly jives with modern food preparation and sanitation mores, therefore the offending cheese is officially illegal. Don’t let that stop you from searching for a chunk along your Italian travels, even if it will run you a steep number of Euros and from a “black market” peddler. “Godfather, you want formaggio marcio? We’ll get you formaggio marcio, don’t you worry.” Reports are it tastes exactly as you might imagine: strong pecorino, the crawly snot-plump bodies of insect larvae, and the slimy fat they’ve made of the digested cheese. Oh, and the worms jump off the cheese while you’re eating it. Mange!

http://www.culinaryschools.org/cuisine/10-disgusting-delicacies/