Robert DeNiro took a walk down memory lane and confessed he tasted cobra meat during the shoot for the epic war drama The Deer Hunter (1978) in Thailand.

It turns out, he was offered the exotic dish during a break in filming for a river scene, but admits the snake snack didn’t pack much of a bite when it came to flavor.

‘We were shooting in the River Kwai, and somebody said, “You want to have some cobra meat?” So, I ate cobra,’ the legendary actor, now 81, told Off Menu podcast hosts Ed Gamble and James Acaster, before adding, ‘It was OK. It wasn’t great, it was cooked literally over a fire.’ 

The two-time Academy Award winner — who recently opened up about parenting his 20-month-old daughter — went on to explain how it tasted ‘just like marshmallows, and that ‘they had nothing on it to kind of give it a different flavor or to enhance it.’ 

The epic war drama, co-written and directed by Michael Cimino, follows a trio of Slavic-American steelworkers whose lives are upended after fighting in the Vietnam War.

De Niro played Staff Sergeant Mikhail Vronsky (Mike), one of the soldiers alongside Christopher Walken and John Savage, in a cast that also included John Cazale, Meryl Streep and George Dzundza.

Robert De Niro, 81, revealed he tasted cobra meat while on location shooting Michael Cimino’s epic war drama film The Deer Hunter in Thailand 

‘We were shooting in the River Kwai, and somebody said, “You want to have some cobra meat?” So, I ate cobra,’ De Niro revealed on a new episode of the Off Menu podcast; still from The Deer Hunter

The gripping story first takes place in Clairton, Pennsylvania, a working-class town on the Monongahela River, south of Pittsburgh, before shifting to Vietnam.

The Deer Hunter was acclaimed by critics and audiences alike, particularly for Cimino’s direction and the cast’s performances, as well as the screenplay, the film’s realistic tones, and its cinematography.

De Niro was honored with a Best Actor Oscar nomination out of the nine the film received, which resulted in five wins for Best Picture, Best Director for Cimino, Best Supporting Actor for Walken, Best Film Editing and Best Sound.

Read More Robert De Niro, 81, gives rare insight into parenting his daughter with Tiffany Chen, 45

The Deer Hunter has been included on several lists of the best films ever made, including being named the 53rd-greatest American film of all time by the American Film Insтιтute in 2007.

It was also selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996, as being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.’

The legendary actor shared other stories about food from his many experiences filming some of his most iconic movies in history in the new episode of the food and comedy podcast.

For Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), in which he played Hall of Fame boxer Jake LaMotta, he revealed he didn’t enjoy gorging himself on food when he was required to gain 60lbs for scenes set when his character was older.

‘When I was getting the weight, I had to eat in the morning three full meals, which was hard to do, and then digest the food, to eat lunch and then dinner. It’s kind of fun for the first 10, 12, 15, pounds, and [then] it’s drudgery.’

The actor went on to explain how the exotic snake snack tasted ‘just like marshmallows, and that ‘they had nothing on it to kind of give it a different flavor or to enhance it’; still from The Deer Hunter

De Niro also confessed he didn’t enjoy gorging himself on food when he was required to gain 60lbs to play Hall of Fame boxer Jake LaMotta for scenes after his ring career; on-set pH๏τo from Raging Bull

‘It’s kind of fun for the first 10, 12, 15, pounds, and [then] it’s drudgery,’ De Niro said of his extreme weight gain for Raging Bull throughout the shoot; on-set pH๏τo from Raging Bull

In fact, he previously described the LaMotta role as ‘one of the hardest he’s ever had,’ primarily due the extreme weight he had to gain and endure throughout the filming process, according to Mirror.

About seven years after Raging Bull, the New York City native told Entertainment Weekly he ‘tried to gain as much weight as I could’ to play Al Capone in The Untouchables (1987).

Eventually, the dedicated performer packed on 30 lbs, while also sharing how he shaved his hairline and wore a prosthetic scar on his cheek to match the real-life gangster, who had been nicknamed Scarface after he was sliced in the face with a knife.

During his illustrious career, De Niro has received nine Academy Award nominations, winning the Best Supporting Actor trophy for The Godfather Part II and Best Actor for Raging Bull.

Along with The Deer Hunter, his other Oscar nominations are for performances in Taxi Driver (1976), Awakenings (1990), Cape Fear (1991), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), The Irishman (2019) and Killers Of The Flower Moon (2023).