By Hindustan Times

Mumbai, April 25 –

When in Bangkok for a shoot, Mugdha Godse decided to tickle her palate with some exotic. Thai cuisine and boldly walked into a local eatery. The display of snakes there almost had her turning back. Determined not to be squeamish, she sat down at the table and played safe by ordering soup.

"It came with plenty of worms crawling in it," the model-turned-actress reminisces. "For the next four days, I stuck to really safe McDonald's burgers and fries."

Prachi Desai is a good little girl who eats everything, even the oh-so-bitter 'karela' (bitter goud). But 'kasam se', the petite actress could not bring herself to munch on the lizards and cockroaches she found in abundance in Bangkok, even though they had been highly recommended as "tasty nibbles".

That's not cricket

Shreyas Talpade was braver. The actor who once thought olives were the yuckiest things in the world, arrived in Bangkok for the shoot of Bombay To Bangkok in which he was playing a cook. And decided to add some local delicacies to his cookbook. "I ate some crickets and worms, deep fried," he says. "Trust me you don't want to try this, ever."

Emraan Hashmi also munched on some insects when in the Thai capital. "You don't want to know what happened next," he laughs.

Tongue in cheek

Chitrangada Singh lived with the taste of ox tongue on her tongue for days. "I had it during a trip to Japan. I had no idea what I was eating. When I did, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth for a long while after," she recalls darkly.

For Dino Morea though the mention of Japanese cuisine brings a happy smile to the face. "I sampled it for the first time at a restaurant in the US. I'd never tried raw fish before. To my surprised pleasure it turned out to be healthy and delicious. I've developed a taste for it now," he says, smacking his lips in anticipation.

All at sea

Koena Mitra loves her fish too and on a night out, is most likely to settle for seafood or Sushi. Once during a shoot in Goa, the true-blue Bong called for a seafood platter. "It had squids, crabs, fish and lots of stuff I had never even seen, forget having tasted," she recollects. Surprisingly, she relished the meal. The only thing she didn't care for was a wriggly jellyfish like dessert that was too sweet.

More recently, Mitra dropped by at a city Sushi restaurant, Fuji, and placed an order for a Sushi platter. It included not just thinly sliced raw fish but different kinds of raw meat too. "The fish I relished but the meat I didn't. I like my meat processed and cooked, not straight from the butcher's block," she points out.

Mohinder Amarnath is a Punjab da puttar who enjoys a 'mazedaar' (tasty) mutton curry. The mutton and seafood at Barbados in West Indies was amazing, he remembers from his cricket tours to the Caribbean. "But I didn't care for the dried ostrich meat I tried in South Africa," says the former Indian captain who was last seen shaking a leg on the dance reality show, Jhalak Dikhlaa Jaa.

Manoj Bajpai frowns darkly over the chicken in milk that a city restaurant serves.

Quack, quack

Tusshar Kapoor found the duck in Bangkok to be as "delicious as tender chicken" but walked out of a Carnivore restaurant in Africa after seeing the snakes and alligators on display, without his dinner.

Bhagyashree also dropped in at a Carnivore eatery in Nairobi and stayed put even after learning about the crocodiles, cockroach eggs and lizards on the menu. "But I couldn't bring myself to taste any of this. I stuck to the tried and tested peasant and lamb. My husband, Himalaya, who is a vegetarian however stayed hungry," she laughs at the memory.

Fly away

Mention South Africa and Pooja Bedi wants to fly, literally. As a participant on the show Khatron Ke Khiladi Season One, she was goaded by host Akshay Kumar to bite into some juicy strawberries that were swarming with flies. Yuck! She took another leap forward when in Australia. "I was happily digging into a nice juicy steak till I discovered that it was kangaroo meat I was eating," she remembers. "After that I wanted to throw up."

Jiah Khan's career has been progressing at a snail's pace since her debut in Nishabd. May be that's why a Parisian adventure ended with a bowl of cooked snails. Eew!