California Studies in Food and Culture-The Pierogi Problem

"Through multidisciplinary collaboration and autoethnographic reflection, the authors conceptualize the cultural ambitions, culinary identities, and political entanglements of Polish ‘tastemakers’ who (re)configure the historical and sensory qualities of local foods. A must-read for food scholars."—Cristina Grasseni, Professor of Anthropology, Leiden University "Much work looks at how 'traditional' foods become fashionable, but The Pierogi Problem goes deeper, unraveling the aspirations and anxieties tied up in the work of curating new Polish cuisine to fit twenty-first-century global trends, tastes, and digital spaces."—Michaela DeSoucey, author of Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food The culinary landscape of Poland is significantly changing, reshaped by a new generation of food producers, chefs, and media personalities. The Pierogi Problem examines people's networks, places, material culture, and media to explain how Polish tastemakers embrace context-specific strategies to localize discourses, practices, and values amid an increasingly globalized food culture. The decades following the end of Poland's socialist regime were marked by a rising interest in foreign cuisines and Western forms of consumption. Today, however, ingredients, cooking techniques, and dishes that were once considered ordinary or part of the country's uncomfortable past are being refashioned to reflect transformations in cultural hierarchies. The Pierogi Problem chronicles how and why local, traditional, and artisanal foods are reemerging for changing cosmopolitan appetites.