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Dec 23, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | Sam O'Brien
This year, I finally made it to Mexico for Day of the Dead. Not just any Day of the Dead either: It was Hanal Pixán, the food-focused Yucatecan celebration that translates to “Food for the Souls.” As someone who covers the “food and death” beat at Atlas Obscura, I’ve had Hanal Pixán on my bucket list for a long time.
It was worth the wait. As I wandered through the city of Mérida, past skull-faced revelers holding candles, I studied the displayed altars with awe.
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Nov 29, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | Sam O'Brien
It’s the year 89. A group of Roman senators has arrived at a banquet hosted by Emperor Domitian. Instead of a warm, convivial scene of free-flowing wine and comfortable couches, they find a totally black room, from the walls to the dishes. At each of their seats stands a personalized tombstone. Boys, naked and painted black, enter “like phantoms” and dance about the room. And the food? Not only is it black as well, but the menu consists of foods typically offered to the dead.
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Nov 29, 2024 | 
flipboard.com | Sam O'Brien
To investigate the legend of Emperor Domitian’s Black Banquet, we made our own macabre feast. It’s the year 89. A group of Roman senators has arrived …
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
learn.g2.com | Megan Wenzl |Fiona Stevens |Melike Ulaman |Sam O'Brien
Today’s e-commerce brands face a unique challenge: their overabundance. Customers can easily compare alternatives with a single click, making it difficult to build lasting relationships. When shoppers have endless options at their fingertips, how do brands appeal to customers who are notoriously non-committal, difficult to please, and even more difficult to keep?
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Nov 11, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | Sam O'Brien
This article is adapted from the November 9, 2024, edition of Gastro Obscura’s Favorite Things newsletter. You can sign up here.
Walk into a church and you’ll likely find the usual iconography: Christ on the cross, a serene Virgin Mary, perhaps an angel or two. But in East Yorkshire, England, another figure joins these icons on a chapel’s decor: the turkey. St. Andrew’s Boynton Church is the final resting place of the Strickland family, an aristocratic bunch based in Yorkshire.
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Oct 25, 2024 | 
learn.g2.com | Joseph Mapue |Sam O'Brien |Gal Deitsch |Manas Jha
Small businesses and big challenges tend to share the same room. You need tech to level the playing field. A well-built technology stack can empower people, optimize processes, and maximize profits. This is especially true for startups and small businesses that face huge hurdles even with leaner teams and tighter budgets. The right tech stack enables small companies to punch above their weight, making its careful and ongoing development indispensable to their growth and competitiveness.
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Sep 23, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | Sam O'Brien
This article is adapted from the September 21, 2024, edition of Gastro Obscura’s Favorite Things newsletter. You can sign up here. Last weekend, I found myself walking along a shaded trail in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A breeze blew from the Susquehanna River through the teardrop-shaped leaves that dangled overhead. As the wind shook the branches, I heard a dull thump. A pawpaw had fallen. I ran over to the source of the sound and found a pastel-green orb.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | Sam O'Brien
With online shopping providing the rarest, most far-flung ingredients at the click of a button these days, it’s easy to forget how challenging cooking in a diaspora once was. Khushbu Shah hasn’t forgotten. She remembers watching her mother in their Michigan kitchen, working wonders to make the dishes of her native Gujarat, India, with a limited American pantry in the 1980s and ’90s. One of her favorite treats was gulab jamun, doughnuts soaked in saffron syrup, with a distinctly American twist.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
flipboard.com | Sam O'Brien
India1 day agoI’ve been savoring one local snack in Mumbai every evening that I... - Jatan the humanjatan.space • 1dI’ve been savoring one local snack in Mumbai every evening that I...
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Jul 1, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | Sam O'Brien
As your plane descends onto the island of São Miguel, the largest and most populated island in Portugal’s Azores archipelago, the first thing you’ll notice are verdant rolling hills. These not only give the island its nickname, Ilha Verde, or “Green Island,” but they’re a preview of the edible delights that await. A product of the Azorean archipelago’s tropical climate and soil, the lush landscape is home to a dazzling array of fruit, vegetables, and tea plants. And those hills?
