Ugly delicious: 11 non-photogenic Asian dishes that are downright delicious
Pretty food is for Instagram. Ugly food is for people who know better. Across Asia, some of the region’s most beloved, soulful and downright delicious dishes look like they’ve lost a beauty pageant but won the flavour Olympics. Momofuku hotshot David Chang popularised a term for this category of cuisine: ugly delicious. These are foods that would never make the cover of a glossy menu, and might require a few tweaks and a lot of AI to look great on camera. However, they have shaped entire cuisines, sparked culinary movements and, most importantly, comforted millions.
Here’s our edible love letter to Asia’s best ugly delicious food.
In case you missed it: 10 stinky Asian ingredients that are flavour bombs
Mapo tofu (China)
Smallpox may have inspired the dish, but the flavour gave it staying power. (Photo: Change C.C / Pexels)
Wobbly cubes of tofu drowning in a lava-red slick of chilli oil, studded with ground pork and a flurry of Sichuan peppercorns. It sounds amazing, but visually? It’s chaos in a bowl. Yet, this fiery mess has been a mainstay of Sichuan cooking since the late 19th century, first credited to a pockmarked Chengdu innkeeper’s wife (“ma” = pockmarked, “po” = old woman). It embodies the famed mala flavour profile (read: numbing, spicy, savoury all at once). Ugly? Sure. Legendary? Absolutely. Mapo tofu became so iconic that it travelled across the globe, appearing in Chinese restaurants from California strip malls to Tokyo salaryman haunts.
Kare-kare (Philippines)
Award-winning New York-based Filipino restaurant Naks flipped the script on kare-kare to make an omelette version (Photo: Instagram / @naks.nyc)
At first glance, kare-kare looks like someone dropped meat into a vat of melted orange crayons. In reality, it’s a rich peanut-and-annatto stew traditionally made with oxtail, tripe and vegetables. It is a staple, from Filipino festivals to Friday dinners. Its origins trace back to pre-colonial indigenous cooking, later infused with Spanish and Muslim culinary influences. Kare-kare is always served with bagoong, or fermented shrimp paste, which adds the funky, salty counterpoint that turns the stew into a national comfort dish. It’s not a looker, but it has royal history. Some people claim it was served at the banquet table of the old Moro sultanates of Mindanao.
Natto (Japan)
Even among locals, natto is a love-it-or-hate-it experience. (Photo: Seiya Maeda / Unsplash)
Natto is one of the most divisive ingredients in Japanese cuisine: sticky, stringy and the exact colour of something you might throw away after forgetting it in the fridge. Made from fermented soybeans, it dates back at least a thousand years, once favoured by samurai as a protein-packed ration. Its aroma (read: funky foot locker) and texture (spiderweb glue) have made it a tough sell abroad, but natto is a nutritional powerhouse. It is heavy with probiotics, vitamin K2 and protein. For Japanese families, it’s breakfast comfort food, often eaten with rice and mustard. Think of it as Japan’s answer to blue cheese: acquired taste, lifelong devotion.
Century egg (China)
Foodies who may not appreciate the ugly delicious century egg on its own may enjoy it with congee or even mixed with regular eggs. (Photo: RDNE Stock Project / Pexels)
Preserved duck eggs that emerge mottled, black and alien-looking, century eggs are culinary shock art. Yet this ugly delicious “ugly duckling” has been part of Chinese gastronomy since the Ming dynasty, and nothing can match its complex umami flavour. The alkaline curing process transforms the yolk into a creamy, pungent green-grey centre, while the white turns into a translucent amber jelly. Served with tofu, congee or soy sauce, century eggs are a master class in how preservation methods shaped Asian cuisines long before refrigeration. Fearsome at first glance, but transcendent once you taste it.
See more: Food fermentation in Asia: a culinary atlas of pickles, pastes and probiotics
Bebek betutu (Indonesia)
Bebek betutu is messy, chaotic and delicious. (Photo: Instagram / @cocobistro_official)
Wrapped in banana leaves and roasted for hours until it looks like it’s been through battle, bebek betutu (slow-cooked duck) is Bali’s quintessential celebratory dish. It’s slathered in a spice paste, or basa gede, then buried in embers to cook low and slow. By the time it emerges, the duck is caramelised, smoky and falling off the bone. Presentation-wise, however, it’s no roast goose in Paris. Historically, this was temple food, eaten during ceremonies and reserved for honoured guests. These days, it is considered ugly delicious food that carries the weight of Balinese spirituality.
Stinky tofu (Taiwan and China)
Stinky tofu smells horrendous, but tastes incredible. (Photo: Zhao Yangjun / Unsplash)
Possibly the reigning monarch of ugly delicious food, stinky tofu announces itself before you see it. Fermented in brine (sometimes including shrimp, vegetables or meat), it gives off an aroma that has been likened to, well, garbage day in summer. Yet in Taiwan and Hong Kong, night market stalls selling stinky tofu draw loyal crowds. Deep-fried, grilled or stewed, it’s crisp on the outside and wonderfully custardy within. Historically, it emerged as a preservation method in Qing-era China. Today, it’s one of Asia’s greatest “eat it before you smell it” experiences.
Fish head curry (Singapore and Malaysia)
Watch Mark Wiens sample the ultra-popular fish head curry in Malaysia.
The fish head stares back at you, teeth bared, eyes clouded, but the curry it bathes in is transcendent. Introduced in Singapore in the 1940s by a South Indian chef who wanted to appeal to Chinese diners (who prized fish heads for their collagen-rich cheeks), it became a multicultural staple. It’s fiery, coconut-rich and fragrant with curry leaves. Eating it is messy, tactile and communal—ugly food as urban diplomacy.
Burmese fermented tea leaf salad or lahpet thoke (Myanmar)
It may not register well on Instagram, but this iconic Burmese dish is delicious and political. (Photo: Instagram / @burmasocial.sg)
Here is a dish where the centrepiece is literally fermented tea leaves. Lahpet thoke is muddy green, pungent and oily. Yet it is a national treasure in Myanmar, eaten for centuries as both daily fare and ceremonial food. Tea cultivation was introduced around the 11th century, but Myanmar is one of the only countries where leaves are eaten, not just brewed. The salad combines tea with garlic, chillies, tomatoes, crunchy beans and peanuts, resulting in a caffeinated funk-fest salad that’s uniquely Burmese. Historically, it was also served at peace negotiations, symbolising reconciliation.
Haejang-guk (Korea)
‘Culinary Class Wars’ alum Seonkyoung Longest presents her version of a Korean hangover soup.
The “hangover soup” that Koreans swear by, haejang-guk is murky, brown and filled with cow’s blood curd, cabbage and long-simmered beef bones. Its roots go back to the Joseon dynasty, when taverns specialised in restorative soups for post-celebratory mornings. Today, it’s practically an institution: after late-night soju binges, Koreans pile into 24-hour diners for a steaming bowl. The dish isn’t winning any beauty contests, but culturally, it’s a rite of passage for partygoers, students and businessmen alike.
Dinuguan (Philippines)
Dinuguan has the unfair reputation of being dare food, but this bloody stew is rich, savoury and satisfying. (Photo: Instagram / @milkywaycafe_makati)
Filipino dishes don’t need to prove anything when it comes to the beauty department. Here, you have a stew of pork offal simmered in pig’s blood, vinegar and chilli. Dinuguan looks like someone spilt ink in a pot. The name literally means “bloodied” in Tagalog. It’s medieval in appearance but ingenious in spirit: Filipino cooks historically made sure nothing went to waste, and blood gave body and tang to an otherwise humble dish. Dinuguan is a fixture of rural fiestas. It tastes even better paired with fluffy white puto rice cakes, proving that ugly delicious food often lives side by side with celebratory rituals.
Paru goreng or fried wow’s lungs (Malaysia)
Noses turn up when people hear offal and organ meats, but these ingredients provide flavour, texture and cultural depth unmatched by your typical muscle meat. (Photo: Instagram / @pananacoffee)
Deep-fried lungs aren’t pretty. They puff up into craggy, brown-edged chunks that look more like charcoal than food. But dip them in sambal kicap or sambal belacan, and suddenly they’re smoky, spongy, addictively chewy bites that pair perfectly with rice. Once a cheap protein source, paru is now a nostalgic dish that connects diners to kampung kitchens and festive spreads. It’s also a perfect example of how nose-to-tail eating is embedded in Southeast Asian culinary history long before the West turned it into a trend.
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