When you think about Polish food, what’s the first word that comes to mind? Is it pierogi? Even at a time when exchanges of culinary influence seem to leap across hemispheres at the speed of light, why are multitudes of sophisticated food lovers in the United States unable to name even one other typical Polish dish?
Poles are as proud of their national gastronomy as citizens of any other land, but they are frustrated at its low visibility outside their country. In this talk, we’ll hear about the spirited efforts to elevate the standing of Polish cuisine both within and beyond the nation’s borders. Loyalists aim to preserve historic Polish food traditions; visionaries pursue hopes of Poland’s repositioning within broader culinary frameworks; artisans are eager to deploy the riches of Polish fields and forests as imaginatively as their “New Nordic” neighbors.
Fabio Parasecoli will discuss Poland’s culinary identity crisis and the lively debates about how to solve it. And we’ll taste examples of various approaches to a remarkable cuisine that for too long has been looked on as “undiscovered.”
Fabio Parasecoli is coauthor with Agata Bachorz and Mateusz Halawa of The Pierogi Problem (University of California Press, 2025) and Professor of Food Studies in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University. In a career spanning several continents and several decades, he is one of the scholars who have done most to shape and enlarge the concept of “food studies.”