What is Italian cuisine? What kind of national identity does it reflect, considering that Italians are famously attached to their local and regional culinary traditions? These are the central questions that food historian Massimo Montanari and comparative law...
What culinary tradition is and what it does is still up for grabs. In the post-Covid relaunch, three restaurateurs in northern Poland offer different takes on how to connect their current customers to the past. Fieldwork in Poland continues to be stimulating. Each...
In the documentary, food becomes art activism, a way to stay healthy, happy, and connected to the land. Ingredients, dishes, objects, and techniques turn into tools to reclaim an identity that is constantly contested and put down. I have been following Adán Medrano’s...
All pictures: courtesy of the Goethe-Institut This film on culinary heritage highlights the role cooking and eating together play in the survival of material and immaterial culture and in the development of an inclusive and porous sense of identity that is based on...
Pictures courtesy of Gieno Mientkiewicz At a time when the food scene in Poland has been severely hit by COVID-19, a group of food professionals is trying to draw attention to a humble but symbolically important product: a cheese called twaróg, straddling tradition...
My chapter in Food heritage and Nationalism in Europe, edited by Ilaria Porciani, reflects on how connections between tradition, heritage and intellectual property have been activated in the global food market. In the chapter, I also discuss the role and function of...
