Poland keeps on providing remarkable surprises. Its food scene is changing surprisingly fast, an impression that was confirmed during my last stay in January. The revaluation of local specialties and the rediscovery of the country’s culinary past creates opportunities for intriguing trips in place and time in unexpected locations, including spas.
As our research develop, we are increasingly interested in how Polish tastemakers – restaurateurs, chefs, writers, producers, entrepreneurs – use time (history, tradition, heritage) and space (the region, nature, the nation) as building blocks to reshape the local food scene. A new sense of place is being rebuild after what many of our informants describe as the erasures of know-how, artisanal skills, and local traditions caused by the desire of the socialist regime to control and coordinate the economy. They also point to long lines and empty stores as a sign of its failure… At the same time, the search for a specific and clearly identifiable Polish culinary identity looks back to the past to look for bot only for roots, but also for the excitement and the variety that our informants often attribute to old-school Polish food.
In this short piece for Gambero Rosso International we looked at a spa and a brand new restaurant as two locations where these themes are negotiated in different – but always intriguing – ways.