"gastronauts" news and stories

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.