Updated on 13 October 2026. The original 2007 post is kept below.
What is the Explorers Club dinner?
The Explorers Club is a New York society founded in 1904 for scientists and adventurers. Its members have included polar explorers and astronauts. Its annual dinner became famous for its “exotic” cocktail hour. In 2013 The New York Times reported on fried Madagascar hissing cockroaches, goat’s-eye martinis, maggots, alligator, muskrat and a whole roasted ostrich.
The menu has changed with the times. Later dinners moved toward insects and sustainability, and NPR reported in 2015 on cricket and other bug dishes as the club leaned into edible insects as a future food.
So the original dinner was less a horror show and more a very adventurous buffet. Black tie, pass the mealworms.
More from the same dinner: oven roasted alligator and bugs you can eat.
From the 2007 original
(The original video in this post is no longer available.)
…And of course they eat mainly insects, reptiles and eyeballs there.
