Gastro Obscura : A Food Adventurer’s Guide

Wonder is around every corner, and on every plate. The curious minds behind Atlas Obscura now turn to the hidden curiosities of food, which becomes a gateway to fascinating stories about human history, science, art, and tradition—like the first book, all organized by country, lavishly illustrated, and full of surprises. 

From those ever-curious, ever-quirky minds behind the #1 New York Times bestselling Atlas Obscura®, with over 815,000 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 exotic and marvelous than we could ever imagine.

Created by the founders of AtlasObscura.com, Gastro Obscura 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 200,000 subscribers—and it is now serving up a lavishly illustrated food-lover’s gift of TK places, ingredients, and experiences. Discover English bog butter. India’s spiced cannabis milk. “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. The “LSD” fish. A croissant museum in Poland. Focusing as much on food’s place in our lives as in 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 how, as the saying goes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison—yes, sturgeon spinal cord, blood tofu, maggot cheese, stinkbug tacos, urine-fermented skate, and lime-cured testicles are each a delicacy somewhere in the world.