Members of New York’s exclusive Explorers Club get together once a year at the Waldorf Astoria hotel to enjoy some of the most unusual dishes ever conceived. From live tarantulas to juicy cow eyeballs, the menu of the Annual Gala of the Explorers Club features everything you’ve never wanted to put in your mouth. A fair warning – make sure you’re reading this and especially watching the video, on an empty stomach.

The annual gala dinner of the Explorers Club is no dainty affair.It’s a black tie event, but that’s about it as far as niceties are concerned. As you’re about to see for yourself, guests of this bizarre dinner gleefully sink their teeth into live tarantulas, tear the heads off exotic roaches, nib on succulent cow’s eyeballs and snack on battered monkey’s hands. Not really the kind of things ordinary people usually get dressed up for, but then again, Explorers aren’t exactly ordinary. These are people who have traversed the Earth in various expeditions of exploration, who love to discover new and fascinating things, even when it comes to food. This annual gala gives most of them a chance to try obscure dishes, even if they aren’t the most appetizing in the world.

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While most chefs work hard to make sure no dirt winds up in their food, at French restaurant Ne Quittez Pas, in Tokyo, Japan, dirt is actually used as a key ingredient.

Mind you, this isn’t just any kind of dirt. It’s a special black soil from Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture, that’s actually been tested for safety, but it’s still the thing most people use to grow plants in. So how did dirt wind up on the menu of this respectable venue? Apparently, Chef Toshio Tanabe once won a cooking competition with his signature dirt sauce, and from that point on he put together an entire menu based on the unusual ingredient. Now the restaurant is offering dishes priced as high as $110 with Kanuma dirt in them.

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You hungry but there’s nothing in the fridge to munch on? Don’t freak out, just take a look at the “treats” offered by this anatomically-correct cake shop and you’ll probably lose your appetite for a while.

Miss Cakehead, the creative director who previously brought us the decadent Bloody Human Heart cupcakes and the Human Meat Shop, has now found a new way to shock her fans – an anatomically-correct cake shop featuring all kinds of sick treats, from STD cupcakes and infected toenail cookies to carbuncle bars that will put your stomach to the test. She’s basically inviting bakers to come up with the most gruesome treats they can and showcasing them in various locations across the UK, as well as online on her Eat Your Heart Out blog. The Evil Cake Shop is described as “a the place that allows your imagination to plumb the depths of deviance and soar to the highest ecstasies of bad-taste and good-flavor.”

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A video shot in Japan recently went viral after it showed a bullfrog served in a Japanese restaurant still blinking and twitching on the plate, after being skinned alive and cut into pieces.

This is definitely one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. Singaporean website STOMP recently released a series of photos and a video shot in a Japanese restaurant where apparently people like to eat bullfrogs while they’re still alive. The video shows a customer going into the restaurant and how the cook there simply picks up a big frog, sticks a knife in it, removes all its inedible innards and skins it alive. Then the focus moves on the smiling customers who enjoys a healthy serving of bullfrog sashimi while the animal is looking at her from her plate, blinking and twitching… That doesn’t seem to bother the young woman much, as she even gives the thumb-up sign for the quality of the dish.

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It amazes me how some people will eat anything. Especially if that anything happens to be disgusting-looking. If you are like me and can’t even eat eggs that are a wee bit undercooked, I must warn you to read this article with caution. What’s coming next is not pretty. We bring you the three most revolting egg dishes in the world.

Century Eggs

These preserved eggs aren’t exactly a century old, but judging by how they look I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. The slimy, grayish yolks and the herbal tea colored ‘egg-white’ makes these snacks quite nauseating to even look at. And yet, the Century Eggs, also known as Preserved Egg or Thousand-Year Egg, is considered a delicacy in China. They are prepared by taking fresh duck, chicken or quail eggs and preserving them for several weeks in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime and rice. The 600-year-old process is said to have been invented when someone came across a few old eggs in a pool of slaked lime. Instead of just tossing them out, they actually tasted the eggs and then made modifications to the recipe. And that’s how modern-day century eggs were born.

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Kiviaq – the name sounds exotic, but wait till you hear how it is prepared. I guarantee you’ll lose your appetite completely. Imagine a dish so pungent and smelly that people eat it outside the house, so it doesn’t stink up the place for weeks. Before I actually get down to telling you what it is, I must warn those of you with a rather delicate disposition – Kiviaq is NOT for you.

The dish is a winter specialty and has been consumed by Inuits in the far north of Greenland for centuries. The preparation of Kiviaq actually involves an ingenious method of food storage that came into being due to the severe shortage of food in the cold months. As clever and important as the practice is, a dish made from fermented sea birds is pretty hard to stomach for those who aren’t used to it. Yes, you read right, fermented sea birds are pretty much the essence of the dish. And get this – they’re eaten raw. Kind of like cheese, but not quite. The preparation goes something like this: a seal is skinned,removing all the meat until only a thick layer of fat remains on the skin. It is then sewn into the shape of a bag and stuffed to the brim with about 300 to 500 small auk birds. When the bag is completely filled, it is sewn shut, and fat is again smeared all over the seams to keep the flies away. The bird-filled seal skin bag is then left to ferment under a pile of rocks for a minimum of 3 months, and sometimes, even as long as 18 months.

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I’ve never been a big fan of fish, but hunger has made me gobble down trout after trout, a few times. But there are some fish dishes I’d rather die than put in my mouth. If you thought eating raw fish, like sushi, was disgusting, I suggest you get a bag ready, before scrolling down, just to be sure, because you’re about to discover the most disgusting fish dishes in the world.

Surströmming

Also known as “sour Baltic herring”, Surströmming is a Swedish dish consisting of fermented hering. It usually comes in cans that, due to the fermentation, often bulge. As long as the can stays closed, Surströmming isn’t much of a problem, but as soon as the lid comes off, the odour becomes too much to bare. This is the main reason even fans of Surströmming prefer to eat this fish dish outdoors. In 2006, several airlines banned Surströmming, claiming the cans were potentially explosive. Swedish authoritis say that’s just a myth, but why risk it? If the can doesnt kill you, the smell probably will.

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In Tuban, a village in the East Java  province of Indonesia, earth is used to make “ampo” a creamy snack believed to have medicinal properties.

According to Rasima, the ampo cook of Tuban, there is no real recipe to making this bizarre snack. All she does is look for clean, gravel-free soil, in the village’s rice paddies, pound it into a solid block, using a stick, and scrape rolls out of it,with a bamboo dagger. The rolls of soils are then baked and smoked for an hour. Rasima then takes the earthy snacks to the village market, where she earns about $2, to supplement her family’s income.

Tuban is the only earth-eating village on the planet. There are people, around the world, who enjoy eating sand, or kaolin, but not baked soil. Villagers believe ampo is a natural pain-killer, and that it makes babies’ skin softer, if eaten by their pregnant mothers.

As for the taste of ampo, “it’s nothing special, it feels cold in my stomach” says one of the Tuban locals, who has been eating ampo, ever since she was a child.

via REUTERS

Photos by REUTERS via Daylife

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For over 25 years, California-based candy company HOTLIX has been creating weird sweets like chocolate-dipped-scorpions and bug lollipops. Think of it as a real-life Willy Wonka nightmare.

The first insect candy created by HOTLIX was a tequila-flavored lollipop with a worm inside it. This was back in 1982, but fast-forward to present day and HOTLIX insect sweets have spread worldwide and are more popular than ever. 70-year-old Larry Peterman was the man with the original idea of bug candy,and now he supervises the farm producing the insects needed to make these outrageous sweets.

Larry and his empolyees work hard at keeping the secret of his insect delicacies and so far they’ve stayed one step in front of the competition, despite several copying attempts. One thing they do reveal is the worms are fed things like apple and banana peal, as well as oatmeal.

If you’re wondering about the safety of eating chocolate-covered scorpions, you should know there’s no danger at all. Once dead, scorpions are no longer poisonous and their stinger is cut-off just in case. Bon appetit!

Photos by BARCROFT MEDIA

via Telegraph.co.uk

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A pest in the United States and pretty much everywhere else, Cuitlacoche, or Corn Smut, is considered a delicacy in Mexico.

Cuitlacoche is sold at a higher price than healthy corn and used to make tortillas. The diseases attacks the kernels, turning them into spore-filled tumors that apparently taste way better than healthy corn. The smut-infected corn is picked before it reaches maturity, so the kernels are still moist and taste sweet, savory, woody, and earthy.

After high-profile chefs and government officials tried to convince the American  people to stop regarding Cuitlacoche as a disease and start treating it like food, cans of Cuitlacoche found their way on to store shelves. But people are still reluctant to try it…I wonder why.

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I love a good omelet and I’ve been known to gobble down boiled eggs from tme to time, but Century Eggs? No freaking way!

Known also as preserved egg, hundred-year egg, thousand-year egg or thousand-year-old egg, the Century Egg is a Chinese delicacy used in many traditional dishes. Fresh duck, chicken or quail eggs become Century Eggs after weeks, sometimes months of preservation in a mixture of clay, ash, lime, salt and rice. The process of “cooking” Century Eggs is believed to date back 600 years, when someone apparently found some old eggs preserved in a pool of slaked lime. Upon tasting them, he decided to produce some more, but this time with some added salt.

After the preservation is complete, the hull mixture and egg shell are removed to reveal the now dark-brown egg-white and a dark-green, creamy and pungent yolk.  It’s the alkaline that raises the ph of the egg from 9 to 12 or more and gives it a strong smell of ammonia and sulfur.

Century Eggs are consumed either raw, or as ingredients in other Chinese foods. There are those who associate them with smelly cheese, pungent but really delicious. Sadly there are others (myself included) who just can’t get past the disgusting colors and smell.

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Because puppy, kitty and rat steaks taste so damn good.

During one of my daily internet surfing sessions, I stumbled on one of the weirdest sites I’ve ever seen. It’s called Rat Beef.com and it’s an online rat butchery (doesn’t that sound delightful). Sure, we’ve featured photos of cooked field rats before, but to see them commercialized online struck me as a tad bizarre. RatBeef states their rats are bred and raised in 100% natural conditions and they even offer a few cooking recipes.

While I was browsing the site’s pages, looking for some suiting pics, I found Rat Beef has two sister (to be read siNIster) sites, Puppy Beef and Kitty Beef which sell…well, you can guess. I know these types of meats are very popular in some Asian countries, but to see them sold on websites containing the words puppy and kitty is just ridiculous.

In case you don’t believe this is odd in anyway, at least you know where you can buy your exotic meats from now on.

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Is this what they mean by brain food?

The disgusting-looking brain cupcakes you see below were baked by a girl named Pamela, back in August, but I just discovered them today and couldn’t help but share with you guys. Delicious red velvet raspberry cake, cream cheese frosting and chocolate brains, created with moulds, make up some of the weirdest deserts I’ve ever seen.

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Students from a Colombian cooking school presented their unusual “love dessert” at the Gastronomy 2009 culinary show, in Bogota.

The special pudding contains dissolved Viagra, passion-fruit and is garnished with whipped-cream and chocolate. The students, aged between 17 and 23, found a way to safely dissolve the magic blue pill in their dessert and create a new, sweet aphrodisiac. They say their recipe contains detailed instructions on how to dissolve the pill.

Because Viagra is a prescription drug, the Love Dessert can’t yet be sold, but once Colombia’s food and drug institute concludes its analysis of the dessert, you may find it in cafes and restaurants near you. Enjoy and make sure to wear baggy trousers.

Photos by William Fernando Martinez / AP

via IBN Live

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I’m not a big fan of canned foods, not since the whole chicken in a can post, but if you like them, you’re gonna love this.

It turns out they put everything in a can these days, even cheeseburgers. Honk, a brave German dude from the Something Awful forums, decided to try this weird dish and document his experience.

Apparently, all you have to do is boil the damn thing, open the can and stuff your face. Honk tried the cheeseburger in a can and said it had a very bland taste and left him with a bitter aftertaste. It doesn’t look as bad as I imagined a canned cheeseburger would look like, but the bottom bun does look a bit soggy.

Honk says he would eat one of these things again and admits he would appreciate canned cheeseburgers more if he was serving them on top of a mountain. Let’s face it, any kind of cheeseburger is better than dry bread or power bars, even a disgusting burger.