Rowan Jacobsen

2 months ago | bostonmagazine.com | Rowan Jacobsen

Q&A In 2020, the Broad Institute scientist ignited a controversy by suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a Chinese lab. Five years later, it sure looks like she was right. Five years ago this month, the SARS-CoV-2 virus shut down the world and changed it forever.

2 months ago | foreignaffairs.com | Rowan Jacobsen |Richard Feinberg

As with wine and coffee, chocolate—once a homogeneous commodity—has become a highly differentiated delicacy. The chocolate cognoscenti now taste delicate aromas and obscure flavors and compete to identify the terroir, or natural environment, where a particular batch of cocoa beans originated. Jacobsen, a science journalist and travel writer, profiles modern-day Indiana Joneses who trek deep into the rainforests of Mesoamerica and the Upper Amazon in search of shade-grown wild cacao trees.

Nov 19, 2024 | newengland.com | Rowan Jacobsen

The town of Paimpol lies 3,000 miles east of Maine along France’s northern coast, which makes it an unlikely place to glimpse the future of Maine seafood, but one look at the craggy waterfront, stone houses, and fishing boats rocking in the cold Atlantic and we get it. I’m tagging along with a delegation of eight Mainers who would like to make the scallop Maine’s Next Big Thing, so we’ve come to the region that wrote the playbook.

Oct 28, 2024 | tablemagazine.com | Emma Riva |Rowan Jacobsen |Stephen Treffinger

In the past, conventional wisdom maintained one should only eat oysters in months ending with “r”, but refrigeration and other factors have made these luscious mollusks viable year-round. On a recent trip to Venice, the Adriatic, and Greece with Viking, I had the opportunity to sample some world-class oysters in Croatia, off the coast of a town named Ston, a little less than an hour’s drive from Dubrovnik.

Oct 8, 2024 | nextbigideaclub.com | Evan Friss |Brandon Keim |Rowan Jacobsen

Rowan Jacobsen is a food writer and explorer. Over the past few years, he has been journeying to the Amazon and Central America, chasing chocolate back to its sacred cultural roots. He has written eight books, including the James Beard Award-winning A Geography of Oysters and Truffle Hound. He has written for the New York Times, Harper’s, Outside, Food & Wine, Forbes, Mother Jones, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Vice, and other publications.