Unconventional Food Order

Knowing Shaggy and Scooby, this isn't the weirdest order this guy has taken.

April O'Neil: What do you guys like on your pizza?
Michaelangelo: Oh, you know, the usual. Flies. Stink bugs.

— Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

There are all manner of foods in this world, with restaurants catering to nearly every cultural and ethnic cuisine you can name.

However, if you really want to show that your characters are Cloudcuckoolanders, you can have them order dishes with ingredients that simply should not be available from your standard restaurant, let alone combined together.

A sub-trope of Cordon Bleugh Chef. Related to Bizarre Taste in Food, with the added note that this is a restaurant order. In other words, not only did someone request a dish with these ingredients, they found a restaurant that honors and supplies said ingredients.

Note that in many nations, ingredients might be used for dishes that are seemingly odd to an American palate, but are perfectly normal to those regions. As such, No Real Life Examples, Please!.

See also: Foreign Queasine, Wacky Cravings, Anchovies Are Abhorrent, Pineapple Ruins Pizza, Wrong Restaurant, and Hold the Unsolicited Ingredient.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• In one short Disney Ducks Comic Universe story, Gyro Gearloose goes to a restaurant that advertises being able to provide customers with anything they ask, and orders and receives a flashlight battery for Little Helper.

Films — Live-Action

• Delirious: Mariel Hemingway’s character orders a signature oddity to the disgust of a deli’s owner: “Lox and cream cheese on cinnamon toast? Get it out of here!"
• Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map: Shaggy orders a triple extra large pizza with peanut butter, pickles, potato chips, and even Scooby Snacks.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990): Referenced in jest when Mikey tells April they like their pizza with "y'know, the usual, flies, stinkbugs..."
• At one point in Tammy, the title character orders a "witch's brew" soda, and has to explain to the employee that you make it by filling the cup with a little bit of every kind of soda in the machine.
• Elf: While eating dinner with his human family for the first time, Buddy asks for the syrup to be passed to him. Since they're having spaghetti, there is no syrup on the table, but luckily Buddy always carries some around in a flask. Apparently, elves eat nothing but sweets: they consider the four food groups to be candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup.
• The Muppet Movie: At the fair, Fozzie orders a cone of honey ice cream for him and a cone of dragonfly ripple for Kermit. Amazingly, the ice cream vendor has both.

Fan Works

• In Sword Art Online Abridged, Nobuyuki Sugou's Groomzilla tendencies include baffling choices for his wedding cake.
  Sugou: (on the phone) No, you listen, Francois! It's five tiers, and they go chocolate, vanilla, chocolate, foie gras- stop crying, I'm not done!

Literature

• In Swamp Water by Robert Munsch, a little girl named Victoria orders "swamp water" at a restaurant, which is cola, ginger ale, root beer, orange soda, and chocolate milk mixed together.
• In the Discworld novel Mort, one of the things Death does on his vacation (having left his new apprentice Mort to handle the job) is work as a restaurant cook. To the owner's amazement, Death turns out to be an amazing chef and is somehow able to give customers literally any dish they ask for. The owner asks for an "alligator sandwich" just to see what happens, and he receives a sandwich that, as far as he can tell, actually does contain alligator meat.
• Played for drama in the Doctor Who New Adventures novel The Also People, when the Doctor and his companion Bernice are attacked in a robotic beach cafe by a swarm of flesh-eating grubs. Bernice orders a flask of liquid nitrogen, which the cafe has no difficulty providing, and uses it to freeze the grubs attacking her.

Live-Action TV

• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: In "The Waitress Is Getting Married," Charlie's already-imploding blind date only gets worse when he asks the waiter for "Milk steak, boiled over hard, with a side of your finest raw jellybeans."
• Only Murders in the Building: The diner serves a sandwich composed of liverwurst and marmalade though everyone hates it, with Bunny even calling it "freak food". Mabel notices the sandwich is designated "Sandwich 14" on the menu, causing her to realize Bunny's last words were her trying to identify her killer as the only person who enjoyed Sandwich 14 — Poppy.
• Power Rangers in Space: When Elgar arrives on Astronema's Dark Fortress, he tries to order one of the Quantron soldiers on the bridge to make a "pastrami on rye, with extra peanut butter" for him.

Music

• In the intro to "The Grouch Song" (on the album Sesame Street 2 Original Cast Record, Vol. 2), Oscar the Grouch orders a strawberry sundae with pickles and sardines on top. He informs an appalled Mr. Hooper that it is not just his favorite dessert, but that of ALL grouches. (The confection was also mentioned in at least one early episode of the TV show.)

Video Games

• In Burger Shop, this is the main gimmick of Clown-type customers, who will order nonsensical things that other customers won't order, such as ice cream with mustard or a pizza with whipped cream; you have to fulfill their orders regardless. This isn't always the case however, as Clowns can also order more conventional food (but still rare for other costumers), including a burger with four stacks of beef patties or one that combines beef and chicken.
• Sam & Max: Freelance Police: Sam and Max love placing bizarre orders at Meesta Pizza and Stinky's Diner, just to Troll the staff. Both restaurants are oddly nonplussed ("He [Meesta Pizza] said toppings are extra, and they're all out of entrails"), while Stinky's exact response varies depending on the game. In Beyond Time and Space, Girl Stinky relays the orders to offscreen cook Sal in humorous Hash House Lingo, but in The Devil's Playhouse, she blows them off completely.
  Sam: Meesta Pizza? I want an extra large thick crust with one half peanut butter and passion fruit, the other half with watermelon ONLY. Do you want cheesy dingles, Max?
• The "Sinner's Sandwich" from Deadly Premonition contains the unlikely combination of turkey, strawberry jam, and breakfast cereal. York gives it the name because he's convinced that Mr. Stewart eats it as some kind of self-inflicted punishment... until he tries one, and is amazed at how much he enjoys it.

Webcomics

• In Freefall the chronically overworked Mr. Raibert has a standing order for pizza with coffee grounds, sugar, and Carolina Reapers.
• The Whiteboard uses pizza toppings as a Furry Reminder; for instance, Swamp Fox tends to order fieldmouse and groundsquirrel, the lynx couple favor thin-sliced hamster, and Doc (a polar bear) gets fermented walrus liver on his pizza.

Web Video

• The Daniel Thrasher video "How Lin-Manuel Miranda Orders a Pizza" is a Song Parody of "Alexander Hamilton" from Hamilton where Lin-Manuel Miranda places an order for a pizza, but the sheer number of toppings he orders goes from the unconventional to the ridiculous to impossible.

Western Animation

• Zig-zagged in a "U.S. Acres" segment of Garfield and Friends. Orsen opens up a restaurant and claims he can fill any order, or it's free. Roy tries to put this to the test, requesting one outlandish concoction after another, only for Orsen to dish it up. Roy finally requests an elephant sandwich with mustard. As luck would have it, an elephant does show up on the farm, but Orsen can't bring himself to turn him into a sandwich. He tells Roy his order is free, and Roy guesses he didn't have an elephant to serve. The elephant then trumpets from his trunk, and Orsen smugly says that he has elephant...he just ran out of mustard.
• Zig-zagged in the Ready Jet Go! episode "How Come the Moon Changes Shape?" Carrot orders a pizza with typical toppings like mushroom, anchovies, and fish, but he also asks for pineapple, apricot, and arugula. With extra gravy.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: Shaggy orders sandwiches for the whole gang at the Malt Shop. Liverwurst a la mode. Two notable things about this; first, the restaurant owner does balk at having to make it, and second, this is the first, and only time we see that the whole gang might be eating this bizarre food combination.
  • The New Scooby-Doo Movies: At one point, Shaggy says he wants a chocolate pizza. This was in an era before the advent of dessert pizzas, so this might not sound strange to a modern audience, but the implication at the time was a standard pizza with chocolate added.
• In The Simpsons episode "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", Barney's Yoko Ono-esque girlfriend orders "a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man's hat" at Moe's bar, and Moe just happens has one ready to serve right away.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "You Don't Know Sponge", Patrick orders his favorite flavor of ice cream: Dill Pickle Swirl with mustard and extra bacon bits.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): The Turtles have eaten some bizarre things in their day. Some of the combinations include but are not limited to: Pepperoni and hot fudge, clam sauce with chocolate sprinkles, marshmallow and pepperoni, sausage and jelly beans, peanut butter and asparagus, and anchovy sauce with strawberries. Eat at your own risk.

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