Adventurers to feast on creepy-crawlies

SOMERSET, N.J. -- The King of Creepy Cuisine fishes a Rubbermaid container from his refrigerator. Inside are four plump Madagascar hissing roaches.

Gene Rurka, who has given new meaning to the term "exotic fare," looks admiringly at the roaches. "They're very nice and juicy," he says.

Tastes like chicken?

"More like a salty brie," he replies.

The roaches are not part of the buggy brunch he is preparing for his visitors; they're being saved for the Explorers Club annual dinner Saturday at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.

The black-tie event is a gathering of accomplished adventurers, scientists and explorers.

Exotic fare has always been a hallmark of the annual dinner. The 1904 event featured roast polar bear and creamed cod roe.

When Rurka took over as the club's exotics chairman in 2001, he expanded the menu and culinary horizons. Explorers Club members may have been everywhere, but that doesn't mean they've eaten everything.

"The hard part was to get guests to open up a little bit more, be more adventurous," says Rurka, 59.

Which accounts for the rosemary-herbed rattlesnake cakes, ostrich tortilla, pickled duck tongue, kangaroo balls bourguignon, Tibetan yak loaf, roasted feral hog seasoned with garlic, lemon, paprika and chili peppers -- all on last year's menu.

And don't forget vertebrate optic globular capsules -- various animal eyeballs -- marinated in a delicate herb sauce.

Bugs? Please. They're all over the menu, figuratively anyway. Last year, guests chomped their way through tempura battered tarantulas, North American crickets, mealworm sushi and honey-laden Madagascar hissing roaches.

The 1,400 guests expected at Saturday's dinner are in for a treat.

"I've got maggots -- about 30 pounds -- on the way," Rurka says. "We've got 2,000 earthworms coming in. [More] cockroaches will be delivered this week. We're missing about 40 pounds of gator; they're probably stuck on a plane somewhere. I'm bidding on some sturgeon in the Pacific. I think I found some 7-foot-long king crab. I'm trying to get some mopani worms from Zimbabwe."

A Waldorf-Astoria kitchen crew, under his hawklike supervision, will cook the dinner, served buffet-style. Ticket prices start at $300.

Dessert, whatever form it takes, will be washed down by what he describes as "the world's most expensive coffees" -- java made from beans eaten and then vomited or defecated by weasels in Vietnam and civets in Sumatra. The coffee sells for $300 a pound.

"What would you like to try?" Rurka asks in his kitchen. He starts pulling containers from the fridge. Various bugs are in there, amid olives, grapes, margarine and other everyday items. He takes cucumber slices and places them in phyllo shells, squeezes cream cheese on the cukes, and drops a scorpion on top.

"We can also sprinkle some maggots on," he says helpfully.

He squirts cactus pear jelly on other shells, topping the spread with roasted ants. Then he deftly inserts inchlong mealworm larvae into cherry tomatoes, careful that the tomatoes don't "explode."

What can you do with crickets? Pair them with sundried tomatoes. Bon appetit!

Rurka is eager to show off his latest creation: Wormzels, several earthworms joined together and twisted in the shape of mini-pretzels. He is so proud of his invention he has trademarked the name.

"Dip them in mustard and you're on your way," the King of Creepy Cuisine says cheerfully.