Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer's Guide (Atlas Obscura)

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This is perhaps most apparent when it comes to food, which is a visceral reminder of how our cultures simliar and how they are the same. A version of this article appears in print on , Section D, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: To Explore: Spanning the Globe For Culinary Oddities . The book is divided up by location, with lots of illustrations, captions, and sidebars, and most stories take no more than a page or two to tell, so it can be read piecemeal (sorry) or cover to cover. This book was a magnificently fascinating foray into the world of obscure eats, many of which take a lot of adjusting to in terms of wrapping your head around the mechanics of them! I think that stating the book was "written by Gastro Obscura's contributors, compiled by Wong and Thuras" would be a much fairer credit.

In the Middle Ages, the bestiary a type of book which recorded and illuminated both real animals and imagined monsters in wonderful pictures. The original site – and its first book by the same name – is a crowd-sourced collection of weird and wonderful attractions around the world, be they strange museums, unusual folk traditions or unexpected attractions. Very much fitting into that mould of intriguing coffee table books that are intended to be dipped into on a whim, I still managed to read the whole thing cover-to-cover in a matter of days.For the traveler or foodie, this coffee table book can transport them around the world with wonderful stories and photos that will leave their stomachs grumbling—all without ever leaving the couch. Short entries organized by continent (Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, North America, South America, and even Antarctica—with the heaviest emphasis on the U. Spanning the globe with these venerated cookbooks, we cannot wait to help you travel without leaving your kitchen through these delicious foods!

I liked that the book goes beyond what is often the “signature” food/dish of a place, but gave me a behind scene lesson into lesser known food patterns/habit. Packed with all sorts of information, it takes us on a journey around the world, highlighting some of the most fascinating culinary adventures possible. Wonder about a berry, grown in the rainforests of southern Nigeria, that is more than a thousand times sweeter than our table sugar. I have a book, ‘Ideas’, by Peter Watson, which gathers together all the ideas that people have had and makes a short introduction to each one of them; ideas including things like: ‘democracy,’ ‘the soul,’ and ‘the scientific method.It is a great gift for the adventurous foodie, with a penchant for the weird and wonderful, and an interest in bizarre historical tidbits. So, although I found out that people on Hormuz’s Rainbow Island can eat the mineral salt soils there - something not included in the physical book - I easily found myself overwhelmed by the online presence. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.