Photo: AP
The menu has featured everything from live octopus to pig hearts, goat kidneys and sauteed lamb's brains at meetings of the Gastronauts, a New York City food adventure club that pushes the boundaries between food and foul.
"Nothing's off the table," Gastronauts co-founder Curtiss Calleo told the Associated Press. "Any restaurant worth its salt has sweetbreads or tongue or pork bellies. There's a food renaissance going on."
Gastronauts was started in New York four years ago, and ever since Calleo and co-organizer Ben Raisher have been dining on extreme cuisine. The group meets at different restaurants on the first Tuesday of each month and its email list has about 300 members.
Nearly 50 people came to the group's March meeting at a Queens Korean restaurant where the adventurous sampled the live octopus and lobster sashimi "freshly vivisected, then displayed on the plate on a bed of lettuce in front of its meaty core," the AP reported.
And the New York Gastronauts isn't the only group for the gastronomically bold.
From Boston's Gastronauts to the Organ Meet Society of New York City to the San Francisco and Denver Food Adventure Clubs, the limits of avant-garde cuisine are being explored by adventurous eaters.
"Non-challenging foods are being eaten by the truckload," Kate Krader, restaurant editor for Food and Wine magazine, told the AP. "We're coming out of a time of very boring food in America."
The Denver club's next menu includes frog curry, pork-brain lettuce wraps and balut, a fertilized duck egg, poached or deep-fried and containing a partially formed embryo. But it's all in the name of resourceful eating in tough times.
"As a chef, sometimes opportunities land in your lap," group founder Jon Emanuel told the AP. "You get assorted pig parts or the random case of tongues. In these types of times, this is a responsible way to eat."
3-18-2010 @4:35PM John McCollum said... Probably both.
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3-18-2010 @8:15PM draven said... Its neither gourmet or gross. It's just people eating out who for some reason think they are special for eating offal. Heart and brains were quite popular in the UK until recent years and I remember seeing them for sale in supermarkets when I was younger. As for saying it is a sensible way to eat in these trying times? It may ring more true if they didn't charge $30-$50 for parts of the animal that are mostly desposed of. These people are obviously just a bunch of posers.
The only distasteful thing was the cutting of legs off a live octopus, if I was in the area myself I may be inclined to report them for cruelty to animals, but that's just me
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3-21-2010 @8:27AM gobo said... Cheers to that.
3-21-2010 @7:54PM Cin said... I agree, eating a live animal is animal abuse.
3-21-2010 @5:04PM kristine said... Vivisecting is unnecessary. It speaks volumes about this crowd.
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3-21-2010 @2:32PM Carrie-Lee said... If these restaurants (which are located in NYC not Taiwan!) have these dishes on their menus, its not as if "gastronauts" are the first people to eat these foods. These dishes and animals have been served for a very long time from different corners of the Earth. And while partially formed embryos are not my cup of tea, these NYC restaurants are most certainly not the first to serve them. So there is really nothing hip, trendy, new wave or even gross about these foods. This is just another club and all they're doing is introducing new foods that some people may have otherwise never taken the opportunity to have. So good for them! But not sure its really newsworthy...
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3-21-2010 @7:52PM Joel Lafargue said... If anyone offered me this awful-looking stuff, i'd politefully decline, not because of its appearance, but because a great number of these dishes are actually unkosher. (I'm Jewish.) As Jews, we are not allowed to eat predatory creatures or bottom-feeders.
3-21-2010 @3:39PM sunny said... Uhhhhh..this is supposed to be news?
Has anybody watched Andrew Zimmern lately???
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3-21-2010 @4:07PM laura said... That is just disgusting! Of course any meat eating is disgusting. Why not try toenail fungus or juicy plantar warts. I think I'll go barf up my veggies now. Ugh
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3-21-2010 @4:17PM kimmie said...
They'd probably taste better that way.
3-21-2010 @4:14PM amyu said... wow-the live octopus thing really is pretty disturbing..This group brings vivid pictures of hannibal Lechter to mind.To each his own ,but I can't see being cruel to any living creature just to fill your gut.
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3-21-2010 @4:14PM Rosie B. said... I'm a vegetarian myself but I don't judge what other people may or may not like to eat. That's THEIR business!
Too bad so many people want to impose their beliefs on others.
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3-21-2010 @5:40PM bren said... GROOSE....................
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3-21-2010 @5:59PM Catmoves said... Slow news day AOL?
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3-21-2010 @10:44PM robert said... have you ever had popcorn tenacles.
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3-21-2010 @6:01PM gary said... don't you mean popcorn TESTACLES??? NEVER ATE A TENACLE BEFORE BUT ENJOYED A MOUNTAIN OYSTER ONCE. CAME AS A SURPRISE(NO PUN INTENDED).
FOLKS..LEARN HOW TO SPELL!!!!
3-21-2010 @6:03PM gary said... I KNOW TESTICLE FOR YOU NON COMEDIC DING DONGS LOOKNG TO CASTRATE ME..LOL!
3-21-2010 @7:21PM ennifer davis said... Americans are bored eating fried chicken , chicken mcnuggets and french fries, chinesefood, italian food, cold cuts, pizza...who can eat that everyday! I'm from the Phillipine Islands and we have a variety of foods and we cook different foods daily so it's not that bad!
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4-02-2010 @5:41PM JD said... This is just my own lonely opinion. I believe that there has been a great turn in the world of "Cuisine." I believe that what is being witnessed are these fru fru types that for whatever reason will eat anything ( I do mean anything) and try to pass it off as the thing to injest. Pass the pigs earwax and buffalo buger pate please. Bon apetit!
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3-21-2010 @9:52PM Dean said... Sick, really sick.
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