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| Elzbieta, Pietr, Lucy |
In May of 2019, I had the honor and privilege of giving the keynote address for the culinary tourism conference in Warsaw at Vistula University. Invited by Dr. Pietr Dominik, I spoke on the evolution and revolution of culinary tourism, and had a fascinating two days of listening to papers and discussions. I was struck by the blend of theory and practice and by the mix of scholars, tourism professionals, and policy makers (many individuals seemed to be all three also). It was eye-opening also to see issues discussed in the US as theoretical ones, discussed with real case studies and practical implications, such as authenticity, intangible heritage, regional foods, national identity, the marketing of everyday, “mundane” foods. (I’ll discuss those issues in another blog on a Polish bread, Obwarzanek, that is a symbol of Krakow and can be described as a wreath bagel.) A summary of the conference is available in Polish (which I cannot read), but I hope to get a translation.
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| obrawaznec |
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| obrawaznec |
The other part of my trip to Poland was an invitation from Elzbieta Tomczyk-Miczka, a scholar and tourism professional who invited me to Krakow for 5 days prior to the conference. Elzbieta was familiar with my work on culinary tourism, had written about it and taught it at the university!! (This to me is the highest compliment possible for scholars--that people find my work useful.) One of the points from my work that she emphasized was the idea that although culinary tourism can be a window into other cultures, it is actually more of a mirror onto one’s culture—foods noticed by a tourist as exotic and strange show what his/her own culture does not have.
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| Smoked cheeses |
Elzbieta’s invitation gave me to chance to put this idea into practice. She arranged tours and guides for me (churches and sightseeing in Krakow, the Salt Mine, the Krakow Jewish ghetto and museum), took me to food festivals (
obrawaznec festival, a women’s collective food fair exhibition), a farmers market, a pierogi making class being filmed by Russian television, drove me to the Pieneny mountains where, with her son, Rudy, as my translator, I took a raft ride down the river with Gural mountain guides and visited shepherds making cheese and herding sheep (including disobedient lambs who kept leaving their mothers’ side to greet humans), and even included me at a family dinner (pasta made by the teenage daughter—similar to my own family meals). And she fed me! Lots of new tastes that showed the diversity of Polish food culture. (We even stopped at McDonald’s in order to do a menu comparison and get sweet potato fries and coffee—very exotic for both of us!) Her colleague and friend, Barbara Tekieli, then continued the hospitality in Warsaw, arranging tours for me of the “old town,” the Polin Museum (on Jewish history), the Vodka museum, and on Saturday, visiting a variety of farmers’ markets and restaurants with historian-tour guide, Agnieszka Kuś (
https://agnieszkakus.pl), who was able to give me cultural perspectives on a number of questions. (Barbara drove me to the airport, too, on Sunday—true hospitality!)
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| Pierogi with lemon sauce, Warsaw, |
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| Fried cheese with cranberry sauce |
So what was exotic to me? A number of foods: lamb sweetbreads, pickled herring, sour soups, blood sausage, other varieties of sausage, beef tongue, snails, horsemeat tartar, trout tartar, any kind of tartar, small “cranberries” made into preserve used on sausages, pickled herring, smoked cheeses, lard spread on bread, rhubarb juice,
obrazanec (bagels), edible flowers, vodka, pickled baby squash,
pierogifilled with soft cheese, small jelly doughnuts (
paczki), and smoked prunes. Some of these are distinctive but not unusual to Poland and eastern European food cultures, while some are specialties of Polish regions. They were new to me, however, because of my background as an American of British heritage born and raised in the South and in east and southeast Asia. Now that I have lived in the eastern Midwest for several decades, Polish American food is no longer unfamiliar, but it’s not a part of my daily eating. I also learned about it when I made a short documentary on Polish food in the Toledo area (
https://foodandculture.org/about-food/food-and-culture/polish-food-traditions/) and was told that what survived is mostly the dishes brought by laborers and farmers, rather than the foods of the educated elite Polish immigrants.
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| Kielbasa stand, Market Square, Krakaw |
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| Paczki |
Kielbasa are oftentimes grilled along with hot dogs, bratwurst, and Italian sausage, and stuffed cabbage rolls (
galumpki) are frequently on down-home restaurant menus as “pigs in a blanket.”
Pierogiare not as common but are becoming so, usually filled with potato and cheese, especially in cities with large Polish populations. I knew about
pierogis from my friend Emily, who invited my children several times to a family
pierogi making party. I also knew of special holiday foods:
Oplatki wafers for Christmas Eve and
paczki f
or Fat Tuesday, marketed along with Mardi Gras king cakes and St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes with green icing for the period up to Lent when it was traditional in Catholic cultures to use up all the fat and sugar before then.
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| Edible flower salad |
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| Sour Rye Soup |
What I tasted in Poland was much more diverse—and delicious! These foods reflected the history of Poland as a crossroads between the east and the west. Trade, invasions, and migrations brought numerous culinary influences through this area, and class differences, as well as urban rural contexts shaped Polish food culture. Food can be used to “read” all of those influences, and in that way, food can be a window into the culture. But it is also a mirror in that it shows the ways in which that richly varied food culture became homogenized and whittled down to just a few “ethnic “dishes as Polish immigrants became established in the U.S. It is also a mirror for me personally because it highlights what my own culinary universe has not included in the past. That will change, though, now that I have experienced the wide range of Polish foods. Some are more to my taste than others, but they are now familiar to me, and I will relish them when I get a chance to—along with the memories of the wonderful friends I made in Poland.
So what was exotic to me? A number of foods: lamb sweetbreads, pickled herring, sour soups, blood sausage, other varieties of sausage, beef tongue, snails, horsemeat tartar, trout tartar, any kind of tartar, small “cranberries” made into preserve used on sausages, pickled herring, smoked cheeses, lard spread on bread, rhubarb juice, obrazanec (bagels), edible flowers, vodka, pickled baby squash, pierogifilled with soft cheese, small jelly doughnuts (paczki), and smoked prunes. Some of these are distinctive but not unusual to Poland and eastern European food cultures, while some are specialties of Polish regions. They were new to me, however, because of my background as an American of British heritage born and raised in the South and in east and southeast Asia. Now that I have lived in the eastern Midwest for several decades, Polish American food is no longer unfamiliar, but it’s not a part of my daily eating. I also learned about it when I made a short documentary on Polish food in the Toledo area (https://foodandculture.org/about-food/food-and-culture/polish-food-traditions/) and was told that what survived is mostly the dishes brought by laborers and farmers, rather than the foods of the educated elite Polish immigrants. 
