On Saturday, about 1,500 guests will dress in their most dignified black tie attire and gather in the Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria, where they will dine on a most distinguished meal: crickets, earthworms, cockroaches, mealworms, and scorpions, prepared with various spices, as well as honey, jelly, and goat cheese.

It’s the annual dinner at the Explorers Club. The event dates back to the club’s founding in 1904, and has become the oldest continuously held fundraising dinner in New York City.

This year’s menu includes 40 different items prepared by the club’s exotic foods chairman, Gene Rurka, and the Waldorf-Astoria culinary team. The menu includes succulent rattlesnake, a favorite of the club’s president, Richard Wiese. He said the honey soy tarantula always elicits a particularly excited reaction from guests.

The largest exotic dishes, such as whole alligators, sturgeon, and roasted feral hogs, become part of the ballroom decor. A winemaker for Redwood Creek, Cal Denison, will provide wine pairings for the dishes, which also include elk stroganoff and pickled duck tongue.

Honorees at the dinner include the director of “March of the Penguins,” Luc Jacquet, and the three men who in 2004 first spotted an ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas, Tim Gallagher, Bobby Harrison, and Gene Sparling. Their sighting of the bird, which had been thought to be extinct, has since been much debated by ornithologists. Yesterday, the journal Science published an article that claims the bird they spotted is in fact a common woodpecker.

The dinner’s theme is “What’s Left To Explore?” As Mr. Wiese said, “There is so much yet to be discovered.” Proceeds go to the club’s year-round work promoting exploration and research, and preserving the instinct to explore. The dinner is open only to Explorers Club members and their guests.