Swallow Magazine calls itself “the anti-foodie food magazine” and says that “each issue is akin to the perfect dinner party where the food is central to the event, but the conversation veers wildly around the table from topic to topic.” In the past, the magazine has covered Scandinavian food and “points along the Trans-Siberian express.” It took more than a year for the latest issue — which covers Mexico City — to come out. And that is in part because it smells.
This issue of Swallow includes 20 scratch-and-sniff stickers throughout that are imbued with the aromas of one of the city’s many colonias, or neighborhoods. (Reproducing the smells in the magazine was a complex undertaking for their printers in Singapore, and is partly the reason it took more than a year to publish.) Not all of the odors are pleasant.
If you want to experience this for yourself, the magazine costs $30 and is available for order. Besides those 20 smelly stickers, you’ll get “matadors, wrestlers, hungry cabbies, dancing girls, sacrilegious iconography, Aztec beverages, hazardous eats, ultimate tacos, dirt-cheap candy, preeminent cantinas, and more.” Which all sounds pretty cool. Maybe next issue it’ll send the actual food, too.
