Alien Cuisine

[SquirmWyrm]

Alright, so in Starfinder Armory, the Other Purchases section lists the cultural cuisine of the six non-human core races.

Now, we can easily apply the same sensibility to the various standard fantasy races by taking their classic fantasy cuisine and modernizing it for the far future.

But what I want to know is what the other playable races cook and eat. What do skittermanders like to snack on? (Other than practically anything) What about the food of the surviving Elebrians? What about contemplatives? Shobhabs? What does a wrikreechee delight in feasting upon?

[The Artificer]

Androids in my game eat nanite lattice hard candies that effectively synthesizes all the body needs to survive.. I was angry that they did not get an entry in armory.

[Pantshandshake]

I would think android’s diets would be as varied as the androids themselves. Android A is 85% biological components, so that one needs bacon. Android B is basically a terminator chassis, with living skin over a machine on this inside? Well that android needs some motor oil and a nice hydrating skin cream.

As for all the other crazy alien races, the food choices are near limitless. Like, don’t Bantrids not have a sense of smell? So Bantrid cuisine is probably bland as hell, given how smell and taste interact. Or maybe it’s the most disgusting thing a human would ever taste. Or maybe it comes out accidentally delicious?

Likewise, maybe Shobhad can’t taste salt, throwing off the whole salt-heat-fat-acid thing we humans love so much. Or maybe where we like salt, they like a little dose of arsenic or something.

Hell, maybe Formians don’t have a bile system, so they don’t digest fats very well. So they eat a high protein diet of… whatever the Formian version of a rabbit is. Probably some leafy greens on the side, you need those minerals to make all that chitin.

[Metaphysician]

In my game, it is established that Vesk have a food called, colloquially, "brain snails". They are a snack food and mild hallucinogen, somewhere between caffeine and alcohol in psychoactive potency. My Vesk PC munches on them regularly.

( Now, whether these are actually an accepted part of Vesk food and culture, or if its a mild degeneracy engaged in by a Vesk of rather un-Vesklike chaos, is TBD. . . :) )

[Pantshandshake]

Brain snails sound like a hell of a gateway drug.

[FirstChAoS]

I remember in alien archive the creature who was a larva filled exoskeleton and it said the larva are a delicacy I thought “a delicacy to who? What species eats grubs?”

A few thoughts on food for common aliens.

KASATHA: Kasatha with their hidden mouths tend to prefer small food items and drinks with straws they can easily slip under their mouth covers.

SHIRREN: Loving choice and variety Shirren likely mixspices and flavors in odd ways that do no tend to go together. Shirren likely taste more flavors than humans and live forvaiety and new taste combos.

YSOKI: Being ratlike I picture a Ysoki eating everything including garbage. Raiding dumpsters is probably a Ysoki tradition.

VESK: Vesk probably like meat but view scavenging as dishonorable. As such they try and keep their meal alive as long as possible. A plate with a small sedated yet living herd animal and a cauterization tool as a utensil to stop blood loss seem likely.

CONTEMPLATIVE: Nutrient rich pastes and fluids for these tiny mouthed brainy guys. Some may be beyond eating entirely and take in nutrients through IV injection or absorb it through a nutrient bath.

SHOBAD: their slicing teeth seem made for cutting pieces off of meat and crushing shells.

BARATHU: I see them sifting plankton from the brethedan winds so likely order food that is gaseous and full of floating nutrients.

KALO: I see fish, crustaceans, and worms making up much of their diet.

I wonder if one of those plant guys from alien archive 2 who were bred to be delicious ever became a chef and literally puts a piece of himself in every meal.

[Xenocrat]

FirstChAoS wrote:

I remember in alien archive the creature who was a larva filled exoskeleton and it said the larva are a delicacy I thought “a delicacy to who? What species eats grubs?”

Humans?

[Steven "Troll" O'Neal]

Xenocrat wrote:

FirstChAoS wrote:

I remember in alien archive the creature who was a larva filled exoskeleton and it said the larva are a delicacy I thought “a delicacy to who? What species eats grubs?”

Humans?

gut loaded mealworms, seasoned and baked are quite tasty.

[avr]

Never feed a skittermander coffee. It's a terrifying sight.

A lot of rodents are actually very picky about their food. Trying to get rid of all rats on an island via poison runs into the problem that some just won't touch anything they didn't try when they were young. Extending this to ysoki, there will probably be some strong family culinary traditions. Some may be understandable to outsiders ("I really like that lasagna! What sort of cheese was that in it though?), some may be about as understandable as haggis or decaying shark.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Hey now, haggis is easily understandable as long as you address it properly! :P

Now I'm imagining a clan of ysoki having a raucous Burns' supper!

On a more serious note, I imagine a lot of ysoki cuisine to be easily portable, stuff you can enjoy on the go, given how travel is such an important aspect of their lives, also easily shareable since their warrens have a premium on space, so you can't really store things like leftovers, and there'sprobably always a cousin or sibling to share with. Next time I play an ysoki, they're gonna ALWAYS have snacks on hand that they can share!

[FirstChAoS]

I picture a Vesk serving bowl of aggressive small furry critters with sharp teeth.

Vesk cuisine, eat it before it eats you.

[Steven "Troll" O'Neal]

Well, since they're ostensibly not mammals, I can see Vesk and Shirren cuisine being literally too spicy for a human to consume safely. Only mammals have capsaicin receptors, so a reptile and an arthropod could eat a Carolina reaper without breaking a sweat.

[avr]

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Now I'm imagining a clan of ysoki having a raucous Burns' supper!

And why not? Scottish = Dwarven often enough, so imagine a flying citadel which took on a clan of ysoki after losing crew to battles and needing replacements in a hurry. A couple of ysoki generations later they're fairly well assimilated, even to the point you describe.

[Metaphysician]

avr wrote:

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Now I'm imagining a clan of ysoki having a raucous Burns' supper!

And why not? Scottish = Dwarven often enough, so imagine a flying citadel which took on a clan of ysoki after losing crew to battles and needing replacements in a hurry. A couple of ysoki generations later they're fairly well assimilated, even to the point you describe.

Huh. You're making me imagine a broader potential cultural element, of "Dwarven is an ethnic identity, not a species". I mean, Torag was already a pretty major deity and cultural influence on other races even back in Pathfinder. I could envision that, come Starfinder, Dwarven cultural influences have grown to the point where most cultural practitioners are not actually Dwarves.

[Neil77]

I've got two takes on Android cuisine.
The first (more boring) is that androids haven't been an independent race long enough to create their own societal flavor yet, so their tastes will tend to mimic whoever their most recent owner was.

The second is a lot more fun. Android cuisine is pure junk food. If you're going to create a slave race that requires food, it makes sense to design them to be fed as cheaply as possible. Do you want to buy their meals from Whole Foods or the corner convenience store? Food should be producible in mass and able to be stored in bulk. Then there's the chemical aspect. Using hydrocarbons (like sugar and starches) for fuel in machinery goes back to the steam age. Fats provide lipid chains to be easily converted into polymers. Preservatives provide metallic ions. On the other hand, without enzymatic assistance, proteins would require more energy to break apart than they would provide. Indigestible cellulose could clog a mechanical system, rather than help clear it, as in an organic system. Cruciform vegetables might provide mineral content, but that's about it.

Basically, the ultimate health food for an android? The Twinkie.

[Simeon]

I like the idea that Steven O'Neal had of Vesk and Shirren food being incredibly spicy.

I think that Vesk cuisine in particular would be mostly comprised of large slabs of barely cooked, heavily spiced meats. Given the teeth on them, I don't see much of a presence for vegetables in their cuisine.

Shirren food would likely consist of flavor combinations that would make most other races shudder. Milk and orange juice for an afternoon drink, that sort of thing. The shirren wouldn't care, it'd be the exhilaration of making it they'd like.

Lashunta food would probably have very delicate and complex flavors, intricately designed to be as delicious and elegant as possible. Subtlety and refinement would be prized, for the Lashunta's sophisticated palates can detect incredibly fine flavors.

I think Skittermanders would eat pretty much whatever they could get their grubby, furry, little hands on, but I think that they'd have an especially sweet tooth, perhaps a deep love for sweet, carbonated drinks.

[Styrofoam]

Mmmm. Add some egg and ice, and I'll take that OJ and milk drink!

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Simeon wrote:

I think that Vesk cuisine in particular would be mostly comprised of large slabs of barely cooked, heavily spiced meats. Given the teeth on them, I don't see much of a presence for vegetables in their cuisine.

This is quite similar to what's been established about vesk cuisine in Armory: meat does play an important part in their cuisine, and they take it VERY seriously. Cooking meat is an ARTFORM among the vesk and one of the first things they do when they conquer a people is learn and assimilate any unique meat-preparation techniques or recipes that people may have developed.

I imagine vesk BBQ cookout festivals can become as violent as gladiatorial competitions!

[TempusAvatar]

On a bit of a tangent, I could see there being a lot of cultural misinterpretation and assimilation, like how Taco Bell doesn't represent traditional Latin American food, or how you can't find anything like Chinese food in China, or how Japanese people preorder their KFC weeks in advance for Christmas and have potato & mayonnaise or roast beef & gravy pizzas.

"This isn't at all like how it's made on Vesk Prime! I prefer mom's bloody meat slabs."

"No way, these are great! These bloody meat slabs are perfectly marinated in Vanilla Coke and WD-40! It's the best Vesk restaurant on Aballon!"

"It's okay, it's just not the same..."

[DJEternalDarkness]

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Simeon wrote:

I think that Vesk cuisine in particular would be mostly comprised of large slabs of barely cooked, heavily spiced meats. Given the teeth on them, I don't see much of a presence for vegetables in their cuisine.

This is quite similar to what's been established about vesk cuisine in Armory: meat does play an important part in their cuisine, and they take it VERY seriously. Cooking meat is an ARTFORM among the vesk and one of the first things they do when they conquer a people is learn and assimilate any unique meat-preparation techniques or recipes that people may have developed.

I imagine vesk BBQ cookout festivals can become as violent as gladiatorial competitions!

Welp now I have an idea for Killer Kitchen or something along those lines for Vesk cooking shows.

[Simeon]

Ha, now I'm imagining a Vesk restaurant as a Brazilian steakhouse on space-steroids.

[Captain J.T. Kirk]

Metaphysician wrote:

In my game, it is established that Vesk have a food called, colloquially, "brain snails". They are a snack food and mild hallucinogen, somewhere between caffeine and alcohol in psychoactive potency. My Vesk PC munches on them regularly.

( Now, whether these are actually an accepted part of Vesk food and culture, or if its a mild degeneracy engaged in by a Vesk of rather un-Vesklike chaos, is TBD. . . :) )

I am going to Steal this Idea!