We've been stuck at home for long enough! It's time to get out and taste the world again. From those ever-curious, ever-quirky minds behind the #1 New York Times bestselling Atlas Obscura, with over TK copies in print, comes an unputdownable guide that marries our endless appetite for travel with our insatiable interest in food. Continent by continent, country by country, Gastro Obscura takes up the mantle of Atlas Obscura to radically expand our sense of wonder about the world--in this case, what humans eat and drink, which turns out to be far more marvelous that we could ever imagine.
Created by the founders of AtlasObscura.com, GastroObscura.com delivers fresh food stories daily to the millions of Atlas Obscura readers and Facebook fans, along with its own burgeoning dedicated email newsletter that is currently reaching over TK. And it is now serving up the best of it in a lavishly illustrated food-lover's gift of nearly 500 dishes, ingredients, traditions, and experiences.
Discover English bog butter. "Threads of God" pasta (only three women know how to make it). The best black bean fritter restaurant in Brazil. The world's largest floating restaurant. A croissant museum in Poland. Focusing as much on food's place in our lives as well as our bellies, the book covers history--the network of ancient Roman fish sauce factories. Culture--picture four million women gathering to make rice pudding. Travel--scale China's Mount Hua to reach a sacred tea house. Festivals--chase a wheel of double Gloucester at Britain's annual Cooper's Hill cheese rolling competition. And such truly surprising delicacies as sturgeon spinal cord, blood tofu, stinkbug tacos, and more.
Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer's Guide is a fascinating survey of facts, factoids, tidbits, and culinary world history curated and presented by Dylan Thuras and Cecily Wong. Due out 28th Sept 2021 from Workman Publishing, it's 448 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.
The layout is arranged with chapters grouped by geographical location: Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, Canada, the USA, Latin America, and Antarctica. Each of the chapters is further divided by country/region. The entries run the gamut from curiosities and weird local tourist destinations to profoundly strange cuisine (casu marzu is peccorino cheese intentionally exposed to the eggs/maggots of the cheese fly - mostly banned these days because of the rare potential for intestinal infestation in humans by the maggots of P. casei).
The book is full of photos and interesting sidebars with "How to try it" for many of the entries. The local delicacies and tourist spots are specified in the text. Really adventurous readers could certainly plan outings or even travel holidays around the entries in this encyclopedic volume.
Five stars. I can't imagine how much work and reference checking went into the writing of this book.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
