Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. It's Friday. Let's talk about food.

In a minute, we'll hear from Michelle Zoner, also known for her indie rock band Japanese breakfast,

about her memoir, Crying in Hmart, which is about food and grief and family.

But first, something a little lighter to start. And Pierre's Ari Shapiro

samples some food and drink in this interview with Cessly Wong. She's the co-author of a book

called Gastro Obscura, a Food Adventurer's Guide, about different foods from around the world

that might not be familiar to food normies like me. But the book isn't done in that corny way that

exoticizes the foods or where they come from. And Ari asks Wong how she avoided that trope.

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Caramelized cheese, sea pineapples, and tree tumors are just a few of the delicacies in the new

book, Gastro Obscura, a food adventurer's guide. It's from the folks at Atlas Obscura,

who've always been interested in taking people off the beaten path, and Cecily Wong is one of

the co-authors. Good to have you here.

Awesome to be here. This book has more than a thousand entries from every corner of the world,

including Antarctica. How did you research and find the stories of all these foods?

It took three years, and we just kind of moved continent by continent and within that country

by country, And we just started

deep diving. But also part of what makes gastro obscure really special is that we have this

...