Explore a database of 1,000 unique foods

Plus pear champagne and Creole cuisine [View this email in your browser]( [6 photos, each showing unusual food] February 5th Black apples, green oysters, and hallucinogenic honey By Alex Mayyasi Editor of Gastro Obscura If you visit the Gastro Obscura homepage today, you’ll see something new: a shiny, new link to our database of unique food and drink. We’re talking everything from [North Carolina’s green-gilled oysters]( to a [Bolivian volcanic-rock soup]( and a liqueur that [only two silent monks know how to make](. If you’ve never perused the database before, I encourage you to [spend some time exploring it](. As you do, you may recognize some of these foods. These short articles were an integral part of Gastro Obscura’s launch in 2017, and we’ve shared them on social media and in past newsletters. So what exactly is new here? Back in the day, we imagined this foods database working like [Atlas Obscura’s map of obscure and unusual places](. That meant readers and travelers like you would be able to add foods to the database, and, together, we’d create the definitive guide to curious and unusual food and drink. The problem was that writing a definitive account of a food or drink required a lot of research, which wasn’t fun or achievable for most readers. We wrote entries ourselves, but eventually we discontinued the foods database and instead encouraged everyone to explore and add to [Gastro Obscura’s guide to places to eat and drink](. Still, we always felt the foods database was something special on the internet, so we’ve brought it back with a new approach. Starting this month, our writers from around the world will add new foods and drinks to the database, with each short article featuring original reporting and expert recommendations. Until then, please enjoy this rundown of the most popular foods we’ve written about over the past four years! 5) Monstera Deliciosa Thanks to their iconic leaves, monstera plants have taken over the houseplant world. So have your monstera and eat it too—with extreme caution. The popular plant produces a fruit that, when unripe, burns skin and tongues terribly. A ripe fruit, though, tastes deliciously of pineapple, coconut, and banana. [Read More >>]( 4) Fried Onion Burger [2 burgers on paper plates with pickles] When you build a comprehensive database of curious and unusual food and drink, you learn to appreciate just how many beloved dishes were created in response to crises and hardship. This burger, invented in Oklahoma during the Great Depression as a hack to save money by using less beef, is the Michael Jordan of tough-times culinary inventions. [Read More >>]( 3) Arkansas Black Apple [Black apples on a tree in an orchard] One day in Industry City, Brooklyn, I wandered into a room where a photographer was exhibiting [glamor shots of rare, beautiful apples](. This was my first experience with the mythical-sounding but very much real Arkansas black apple. [Read More >>]( 2) Tiger Tail Ice Cream Nowadays, good food doesn’t stay local for long. But that makes it all the more charming when a popular food or flavor remains beloved locally and nowhere else, as is the case with this Canadian ice cream flavor of orange and black licorice. [Read More >>]( 1) Mad Honey [A giant honeycomb hangs from a rope harness] Difficult and dangerous to harvest, this hallucinogenic honey from Turkey is one of the world’s rarest, most expensive varieties. It may also have once been used in a literal honeytrap that felled Pompey the Great’s army in 69 B.C. To avoid the fate of those soldiers, you may want to skip this one and just enjoy knowing it exists. [Read More >>]( Editor pick: Nagashi Somen [Noodles swirl around a tabletop, artificial whirlpool] Out of hundreds of foods in our database, I love nagashi somen the most. A spin on the Japanese summertime tradition of serving cool noodles over ice, nagashi somen involves snatching noodles out of a bamboo waterslide with chopsticks. Hopefully Japan will reopen to international tourists in time for me to try nagashi somen this summer. [Read More >>]( More of Gastro Obscura’s Favorite Things Incompatible Food Triads 3️⃣ Two weeks ago, I explained [the incompatible food triad]( and asked folks to suggest possible solutions. (Even though there probably is no solution!) I sympathize with the suggestion “chocolate, orange, grapefruit,” but my favorite chocolate brand makes grapefruit chocolate, so that's not a solution. My favorite response, though, was a charmingly definitive refutation of tea, lemon, and milk as an impossible triad: “To my mind, the tea/milk/lemon triad of incompatibility was disproved in 2003, when the play QED about Feynman was performed at MIT, followed by a reception where we were served one-time-only ice cream created by Gus Rancatore, ice cream genius and founder of Toscanini's ice cream in Cambridge, based on that combo. The ice cream was fantastic.” Bugging the Teacher 🪲 When life gave chef Joseph Yoon a supply of Brood X cicadas, he made [cicada ceviche](. If that sounds good to you, you’ll want to sign up for the Gastro Obscura course that Yoon, of Brooklyn Bugs, teaches [on entomological cuisine](. This two-part lecture series is entertaining, practical, and starts on February 22. Pear Champagne 🍐 Long before champagne spread across Europe, English families enjoyed another type of bubbly: perry. Made from fermented pears, it declined into obscurity in the 1900s. But as noted in [this JSTOR Daily article]( first published in late 2017, it’s having a bit of a comeback, one made possible by 200-year-old paintings that helped identify lost perry pears. Creole Cuisine ⚜️ My ideal vacation ideally involves both amazing food and exploring the great outdoors, whether by hike, bike, or boat. So I’d love to go on [our New Orleans trip]( which features both a culinary tour and a kayak excursion through the bayou. If that’s not stimulating enough, you’ll also enjoy Mardi Gras and a crawfish boil. How would you rate this email? lowest [1]( [2]( [3]( [4]( [5]( [6]( [7]( [8]( [9]( [10]( highest Copyright © 2022 Atlas Obscura Inc., All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you once requested to be included on the Gastro Obscura Newsletter mailing list. You can unsubscribe at any time. Atlas Obscura Inc. 61 Greenpoint Ave #210Brooklyn, NY 11222 [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? 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