National Geographic for millenials? - in a foodie way
- rosemary
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
"our mission is to inspire wonder and curiosity about the incredible world we all share." Atlas Obscura
I'm back to websites, because I don't have much time or inspiration either when it comes to that. This time I am looking at Gastro Obscura which is an offshoot of Atlas Obscura. So just a couple of words about Atlas Obscura first. Atlas Obscura was founded back in 2017 by Joshua Foer and Dylan Thuras - with the mission statement at the top of the page. Initially the focus was on travel - to the unexpected and unknown, which included books and actual tours, as well as the website.
As you can see from the above it's very professional. It had its roots in community, with most of the stories being gathered from contributors - interested people from anywhere, and they often wrote the stories themselves. Today most of the stories are written in-house by professionals, but nevertheless contributions for ideas are invited. And yes it's American but its reach is world-wide and its stories come from just about every corner of the earth.
Food and travel are interrelated as we all know and so eventually in 2017 Gastro Obscura was launched with a similar format to Atlas Obscura - regular articles about the unknown the strange, the wonderful and the amazing. There were stories about eating places, people who made food in the broadest sense, new foods, farming, commerce ... Currently their home page has links to articles on Gator, Boar, and Venison? Inside the Boldest Bowl of Chilli in Florida; various restaurants in Hong Kong; Tiquira (a Brazilian drink); What does a galaxy taste like? and One man's lifelong quest to make a lettuce cigarette ... As it's makers say:
"all Gastro Obscura entries have an element of the hidden or inspire a sense of awe and wonder."
I have come across it every now and then when I have been looking for more on a wide variety of topics. And yes indeed it is a kind of National Geographic of food - and yes, aimed at millenials - cashed up ones too - probably not me.
So I was quite intrigued to come across a review of their book Gastro Obscura: a Food Adventurer's Guide which was a compendium - a large one - of a selection of articles from the website. The reviewer was Christopher Roosen, who describes himself in a somewhat pompous/pretentious way as:
"an Experience Anatomist, because of the way I use systems thinking and human centred design to get under the skin of historical, modern and future experiences."
Nevertheless he had a couple of things of interest to say, which went beyond the actual book he was talking about - or rather although he was talking about one book, and the associated website, what he said could apply to any number of things:
"the more I consumed, the more I kept wanting to consume; new facts, new stories, new ideas. But the ever increasing consumption meant that I wasn’t really taking in the stories anymore." Christopher Roosen
Now the first part of that statement is a good thing surely? Surely we should be learning about the world in all its facets, and anything we find that is of interest to us but new, is surely a good thing. The second part however, is the challenge of today is it not? So much information coming from every direction, that not only are we unable, necessarily, to work out what is reliable and what is not, but also there is just information overload. And I suppose my way of dealing with this is to filter out to the edge what I am not that interested in, and focus on what I am interested in. Which is mostly food - which sounds really limited, but, of course, as I have hoped to demonstrate by writing these posts, is actually about almost everything. Although maybe not quantum anything - I see it's World Quantum Day today. I can only assume that the symbols below spell Google in quantum-speak - if there is such a thing.
Christopher Roosen then goes on to say:
"There is perhaps one slightly unsettling question in all of this. I can’t help but wonder, wherever the foods come from, are we interested in them because they paint a unique picture of the customs of a different place, or, are we fascinated because it makes different foods seem weird?" Christopher Roosen
Does he mean different foods, or is it really the people that eat these weird foods who are the weird part of the story? Is it all part of that fascination with the repulsive, the violent, the disgusting - eating all those unspeakable parts of the body. Or like this truly horrific, yet strangely poetic paragraph from Nigel Slater's newest book, A Thousand Feasts:
"In Osaka, at a tempura counter. The chef lifts little fishes from a tank and drops them into the batter and then instantly in a cauldron of sizzling oil. Seconds later, what arrives on my plate is three little fishes encased in pale, frilly batter, their bodies arched and leaping, frozen in time."
Such beautiful writing about something - yes - barbaric. So barbaric, that although I had earmarked this particular passage, I wasn't at all sure (a) how I felt about it, other than instinctively repelled, and (b) how I could use it? Food for thought anyway, and probably enough to turn many of us to vegetarianism. He didn't say whether he ate them.
I see I have sort of strayed from a straightforward analysis of this particular website - which in a way is what Joshua Foer, founder of Atlas Obscura did. For he is really all about memory - a memory champion - there are competitions, and a researcher and writer about memory through history and cultures. Atlas Obscura and even more Gastro Obscura would seem to be a completely different sideling. But then food is at its heart an aspect of memory is it not - personal, historical, familial, cultural ...?
Last word - almost along the same lines - to Christopher Roosen:
"everything I read sent me down new avenues of speculation and curiosity. In what we do and what we eat, we are all so very different and also so very much the same."
I guess that's sort of what I am doing when I tap away at my computer. Alas I generally forget it all.
YEARS GONE BY
April 14
2024 - Nothing
2023 - Italian yum cha
2022 - Scraps
2021 - What makes lasagne so good?
2020 - deleted
2019 - Nothing
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