I don't really see how an "open mind" will help the flavor of something. It's not going to change the chemical makeup of the food, nor is it going to alter the flavor.
I've yet to come across anything that has miraculously changed flavor since I was first exposed to it. If anything, my forays into cooking have shown me numerous disgusting new things. For example, I have now sampled "brewed" soy sauce, which is apparently the way it's meant to be made, and not the hydrolyzed stuff I was familiar with. It's kind of like salty soy wine, and it stinks of alcohol. I also used oyster sauce in this same recipe. I think someone bottled Satan's smegma and sold it as oyster sauce. Sesame oil was also used, and it too carried a rather offensive smell.
This was all in an attempt to make beef lo mein according to a recipe. I'm fairly sure that it turned out correctly too; the flavor did seem like I'd imagine it should be - the recipe was apparently geared toward making "authentic" Chinese food, and not the Americanized stuff that's usually sold in restaurants. But good god it was horrible. And I don't like wasting food, but it went in the trash. The apartment reeked of the smell of the various ingredients for several days after. Most people seem to become immune or acclimated to a smell after a certain period of time. I don't seem to do that; it stays just as strong, unpleasant, and distracting a few hours later as it does when I would first walk into it.
I also never knew what the big problem was; my mom always made these PA Dutch dishes, or stuff from around the world. I learned to fear the words, "Try this, it's good!" because it was almost never true for me. But then, I was thinking along these lines: "I'll gladly eat <dish I like> every day for a week, and it's easy to cook the same thing over and over. What's the problem?"
Unfortunately I also eventually found that the prep time for some of the things I like could literally be hours, or even a full day of tending to various pots on a stove. Yeah, screw that. Food isn't worth that kind of trouble. An hour or less is what I'll tolerate in the kitchen. Tedious, mindless food prep work should be left to machines. It just sucks that most prepared food is about 50% sodium and preservatives.