What's a food combination that goes surprisingly well together?

Milkshake with crispy bacon. You've got sweet, fatty, salty, crunchy, umami, creamy. So amazing. Blend or crumble a couple pieces into it but then have a whole piece or two stuck in it so you have bigger pieces to play around with. Has no business being as good as it is

In college we used to take a Ritz cracker, ez cheese, and top with a pizza roll. I haven't tried one in some years now but I remember it slapped at the time

Used to know someone who would pour a box of junior mints into popcorn at the theater. Shake it a couple times, let it sit just long enough to get a little melty, then go wild. Bonus points for adding enough buttery topping to soak through the bottom of the container

Peanut butter and dill pickle sandwich. Maybe with a little Sriracha.

Pineapples and pizza. Yeah I said it.

Salmon + roasted Brussels sprouts

Wendy's French fries dipped in their frosty. It was at least a good combination twenty years ago ...

Blue cheese and Dr Pepper. The Dr Pepper brings out the sweetness of the cheese and the tanginess of the cheese complements the sour of the soda.

Dr Pepper is the blue cheese of soda, after all.

Coffee and bananas

Make your a salami sandwich with the following steps.

1. Toast the bread.
2. pan fry the salami slices til their a little crispy on the edges.
3. spread hummus on the bread once it’s toasted.
4. add the crispy salami, some lettuce, and seasoned tomato to your sandwich and enjoy.

People look at me sideways for using hummus as a sandwich spread, but it’s delicious.

Kalimotxo. It’s red wine and cola in roughly equal parts, to taste. It’s a great way to salvage old wine that’s a day or two past drinkable, especially on a hot day.

I described it once on reddit in the before times, and someone called it a “shit red wine spritzer” and I think that’s kinda apt.

Jägermeister with milk. Or Batida de coco (with or without milk). Or with lemon juice and definitely no milk. (Don't judge me, it's legit good with milk)

Orzo (rice shaped pasta) and peanut butter, its ultra-dense camping food, never need to make more than a small bowl.

I have a 200 item list of grazing board foods that I've personally mixed and sampled every single 2 and 3 item combination and curated every item to be acceptable to delicious in 3 part combos.

By far the two strangest combos to any guest are the spicy salami and the dark chocolate on baguette bread or the rum dates and stone stone-ground mustard on butter cracker.

The sweet and bitter of the chocolate mixes so well with the oilly spice of the meat, and the baguette bridges the textures to provide a comfortable mouthfeel by soaking it in.

For the second, the vinegar and tang of the mustard heighten the rum without taking away the sweet paste of the dates and the cracker provides enough texture to not feel like you're eating sauce and enough salt to soften the vinegar and alcohol bite.

Honestly, it's my favorite dinner even because it's so much fun to watch people look at you in horror when you suggest they try something, then try it and see that horror melt away into absolute wonder.

Strawberries and black pepper. You’re welcome.

As a kid I remember jam (probably strawberry) and cheese (Cheddar or red Leicester) sandwiches being pretty awesome. For manifold reasons, peanut butter was not something made available to me back then, so that would be the closest our house ever got to that.

Peanut butter and ajvar.

Chocolate and anything spicy.

Oreos and yellow mustard. Don't knock it til you try it. Then call me a heathen, respectfully.

Half pure orange juice and half cola.

Chicago corn (cheddar popcorn mixed with caramel corn). Sounds weird - is awesome.

Salt on watermelon, and salt on pineapple.

Also, cayenne pepper on anything chocolate - brownies, ice cream, etc.

Cooked Eggs (preferably poached) On toast with....

Vegemite.

You can thank me later.

Popcorn and pickles. Worked with a pregnant lady who had a craving for these together and, well, she wasn’t wrong.

Both of these are established dishes, so I don't know if I could call them unexpected, but:

• Jalapeno chocolate fudge cake, tried on a whim at a restaurant. Thought it might be a disaster, but hot stuff and sweet (and fatty) stuff works surprisingly well together. I suppose that it's kind of closer to how the Mesoamericans used to originally eat cocoa, which could be with chilis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_cuisine#Cacao

  Chocolate could be prepared in a huge variety of ways and most of them involved mixing hot or tepid water with toasted and ground cacao beans, maize and any number of flavorers such as chili, honey, vanilla and a wide variety of spices.[31]

  The ingredients were mixed and beaten with a beating stick or aerated by pouring the chocolate from one vessel to another. If the cacao was of high quality, this produced a rich head of foam. The head could be set aside, the drink further aerated to produce another head, which was also set aside and then placed on top of the drink along with the rest of the foam before serving.

• Five Guys does a milkshake with bacon sprinkles that I thought sounded like it could be pretty gross, but crunchy salty apparently works with sweet fatty as well. Goes somewhat downhill as the bacon looses its crispness, though. Be interesting if there's some sort of waterproof coating that one could put on it. ("chocolate-coated bacon bits?")

Macaroni and cheese and pretty much anything.

Tuna Mac: Tuna?

Tuna and any grilled vegetables?

Poverty Mac: Pork and beans?

Pork and beans AND chopped up hotdogs?

Spaghetti Mac: Leftover spaghetti sauce?

Taco Mac: Leftover taco meat?

Get the velveeta Mac and cheese for extra luxury.

PB & J, I mean yeah, tried and true, but it's odd that peanuts and berries go well together when both are squished 😅

Whiskey and black licorice.

I don't think that's that weird. Ginger + sour kicks ass. Not much different from a Moscow mule really.

As for me somebody turned me onto salting my watermelon slices. Pretty damn good

Most types of cheese on top of hot beans

Corn and mayo.

Stoner cheesecakes: a thin wheat cracker, with a slice of white cheddar, a drop of honey, and a chocolate chip. Top it off with some Frank's Red Hot.

Vanilla ice cream with good quality evoo and kosher salt.

Might not be that weird, but brie and pepperoni go together like they were made for each other.