Thank you to the Village Voice's food blog, Fork In the Road, for posting these great Explorers Club menus from their famous dinners of yesteryear. More info:
The Explorers Club was founded in 1904 by a couple of full-time explorers and a ragtag crew of archaeologists, journalists, and professors -- they finally began admitting women members in 1981, starting with the geologist Kathryn Sullivan and deep-sea diver Sylvia Earle.Today, the club is still driven by "the instinct to explore," especially at the dinner table. Once a year, international members gather in New York to honor "various accomplishments in exploration" and to eat extremelyadventurously, from a banquet that famously celebrates the marginalized delights of maggots, scorpions, and roaches, and offal of all sorts, from duck tongue to pig's face. (Back in 2001, three allergy-prone diners suffered from burning, itchy mouths after eating improperly prepared tarantula tempura -- the spider had been served with its urticating bristles, or poisonous leg hair, still intact.)This year's feast -- the club's 109th -- takes place on Saturday evening at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Here's a look back at some of the club's menu designs over the years, starting in 1896 when it was still called the Arctic Club, through 1974.