The Pierogi ProblemCosmopolitan Appetites and the Reinvention of Polish Food

Fabio Parasecoli is Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University. He is author of numerous books, including Gastronativism: Food, Identity, Politics.

Agata Bachórz is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Gdańsk, Poland.

Mateusz Halawa is an anthropologist and sociologist working between academic practice and design strategy.

Fabio Parasecoli

A common misconception about Polish food is that it is universally heavy and bland. While traditional dishes like pierogi and bigos are hearty, the cuisine however is far from one-dimensional. The perception of blandness often stems from a period of food scarcity and simplified cooking during the socialist era. What is overlooked is that Polish cuisine is vibrant and evolving, with a growing emphasis on fresh, local ingredients, diverse spices, and even vegetarian and vegan options, particularly in urban areas. There’s also a rich history of fermentation and smoked foods that contribute complex flavors, moving beyond the stereotype of just meat and potatoes. The Pierogi Problem looks at both the history and future as well as a new found pride in Polish cooking.

One of the book’s, Fabio Parasecoli, talks to us about the gastronomic changes that are occurring with Polish cuisine.

Books About Food (BAF): Well, I guess congratulations on the book first of all.

Fabio Parasecoli: Thank you. Thank you.

BAF: Is the interest mainly in Poland or over here in the US?

Fabio Parasecoli:No, also here, it’s two kind of different interests, I would say in Poland, they’re very much intrigued by the fact that an outsider like myself who A, is an Italian B, was a food critic, CA food professor in New York City is interested in their food at all. And so they’re like, why? How did that happen? Which I find very interesting. And so very often that’s the conversation and also this sort of rediscovery of the traditional food is a relatively new thing there. So the conversation can be very interesting while in the US, well, there are different elements. One, there is the Polish diaspora element because of course in the US there is a ton of olds and they’re also very sort of proud, but like huh, about the fact that a book is being written about Polish food. And so they immediately, so are you going to talk about Polish food in, I don’t know, Pittsburgh? And I was like, no, no, this is just about Ola. And then the other sort of interest we have is how this sort of rediscovery of traditional food, the embrace of what we call cosmopolitan appetite. So the circulation of ideas, values, practices, preferences that build globally through social media. They’re quite interested about that also, because Poland used to be a socialist country. So how did that happen? Where is that going? So depending on the audience, I guess different questions.

BAF: Well, how does former Italian food critic based in York come to write a book about polar

Fabio Parasecoli:Cuisine. So it happened almost by serendipity in the sense that back in 2016, The Adam Mickiewicz Institute, which is sort of the Polish government organization to promote Poland abroad, organized a trip for food writers to discover the food of Poland. And they got in touch with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who used to be a professor at NYU, but she’s been very much involved with the Polish Jewish Museum in Warsaw. And so they talked to her and we knew each other. So she gave them my name and they invited me and I was like, sure. I had been to Poland before once in 2009, and let’s say I was not impressed by the gastronomy landscape. And so when I went back in 2016, there were really interesting things going on. And so it’s like, how did it happen so fast?

What sort of dynamics, what transformations happened? So the following year I was invited again, and then I was collaborating with a former colleague of mine at the new school, a doctoral student who is also was a member of Polish Academy of Science. And he was like, why don’t we ask for a grant from the National Center for Research in Poland? We did, we got this grant for three years that then became four because COVID happened. And so since 2017, basically I’ve been going pretty often getting to know many of the actors in this evolution of Polish cuisine, collaborating with them, interviewing them. Of course, that required learning polish, which has been…not the easiest thing. And to this day, I understand much more than I can speak. So usually I do interviews, I start with questions, they answer, I understand what they’re saying, but then I sort of continue the conversation with very simple sentences.

But it works. It works. I was able to do this ethnography also in collaboration with two Poles. So the person that was at the Polish Academy of Science and the sociologist at the University of Danzig. So it was also interesting because there was this ongoing conversation between their points of view about Poland and what was happening and my point of view as an outsider about what was happening. And so we kept on having these very good conversations and they actually taught me a lot because coming from outside at times, you don’t fully understand the background, what happens. And they were able to point it out to me and myself as an outsider, I could point out their points of view or biases. So it was a very interesting process also in terms of collaboration.

BAF: It sounds like a very interesting process. Well, how did you go about conducting the research for this book?

Fabio Parasecoli: How did I conduct the research? So we did different things. For instance, we went into private homes and looked at kitchens, what they had in the pantry, in the fridge, went shopping with people to see what they shopped, how they shopped, how they talked about shopping. So that was one element. But there was a lot of interviewing all sorts of people in the culinary field. So chefs, food producers, food critics, marketers, influencers, shop owners, owners of, I don’t know, a trout, how would you call it? A place where they have trout.

BAF: Trout farm.

Fabio Parasecoli: A trout farm. Yeah, actually several. So the interview of course was quite important, but also visiting the places where these things happen so that I could hear what they were saying, but I could also see what they were doing. And also I could observe the sort of material aspects of this, what it means to bring back an almost extinct local variety of trout into a place where new varieties had become prevalent because they grow faster and they’re bigger, but they’re not as tasty.

So I try really to go into kitchens. I also worked with researchers, other academics also in Poland, there is sort of a development of studies about food. They don’t call it food studies because there is no department, no program as such. But there are sociologists, historians, anthropologists, geographers that do food studies. And so I’ve become part of that community. I’ve met many of them, discussed with them. And then I participated in tons of events and some, I was a speaker and some I was a guest and some, I was just one about thousands of people going to a food festival and see what people do in these food festivals. And they’re becoming very popular in Poland.

So it was observation, but very often participant observation, because I was also involved with what was happening once we had sort of a design workshop with young chefs where we had them imagine how they see themselves in five years and in 30 years. And so how they imagined that we’ll be cooking, Polish food, all sort of different approaches. And of course there was a whole lot of getting acquainted with a literature, especially in Polish, that I was not very familiar with because of course working in the US you don’t have access to much Polish research in the original language. So that’s also been quite interesting. But I must say my coauthors helped a lot with that.

BAF: I was intrigued by your admission earlier that you, on your first trip to Poland didn’t quite like the food it does. Now, I’m saying this respectfully in the sense that it doesn’t have the most interesting reputation,

Fabio Parasecoli: And I don’t think it’s fair. When I was there in 2009, it was still, I wouldn’t say the beginning, but it was still in full transition after the end of the socialist era until 1989, it was the government that had everything centralized production. There were very few restaurants. Producers had to meet certain, not center standards, certain goals that were given to them by the government. But the result is that the system didn’t really work. So there was food scarcity. Certain things were hard to find. So when Poland first opened and people could open restaurants and people that started making money wanted to go to restaurants, they were interested in eating risotto or lobster and definitely not polish food that for them, for many of them we’re still connected with those decades that were a little gray.

But then over time, also because the rest of the world was moving towards reconsidering and reevaluating local food, traditional foods, s low food movement and all of that, also St. Poland, the people that were more exposed to this sort of global trend, they were like, huh, so maybe we also have something interesting that we have not brought to light or maybe needs to rediscover. And they started and they started in the mid-aughts, and they were really fast. They were really fast. So now you have really, really interesting food production, interesting restaurants. There is a whole wine industry that is basically being created out of nothing. There was no wine production in Poland in 1989. And now there are tons of wineries. Of course they’re growing. I put it like that. And plus their climate, it’s a little complicated to grow wine. Climate change is helping them because of course it’s warmer.

And so until now, the vast majority of wine producers had used hybrid grapes engineered in Germany to withstand the cold. And they use that for wine, both for red and white. But now that the weather is actually changing, the temperatures are changing. There are producers that are working with sort of grapes like Merlott or Cabernet, and it grows. And the wine is expensive because of course, it’s still a small industry, it’s a niche industry. But many polls that go to restaurants are curious. And also tourists that go to Poland, and suddenly they see Poland wines on the menu. They’re like, okay, I have to date this. And so the industry is actually growing. But going back to your question, sorry, I went in a little all sort of directions.

BAF: That’s what happens.

Fabio Parasecoli: I think their cuisine is quite interesting. They have, for instance, a whole big traditions of fermentation for bread, for fermented vegetables, and it’s really good stuff. And now they’ve realized that also in other parts of the world, fermented food are sort of trendy and fashionable. So they’re like, huh, we’ve been doing this forever. And look at now everybody wants to do fermented foods. They have really good smoked foods that I also enjoy quite a bit. The trout that I was talking about. When they smoke it, it becomes fantastic. It’s really, really good. They have this connection with the environment, with nature. In late summer fall, they go crazy for mushrooms. I mean, they go everywhere getting mushrooms. I remember once I was in one of these tours and the guy that was driving our little van, we were on the street and he was driving pretty fast.

He stopped the van and we were like, what’s happening? He had seen mushrooms on the side of the street and he decided he had to pick them. I dunno how he saw them, because we were going 40 miles an hour in the countryside,BAF: If you know, you know.

Fabio Parasecoli: If you know, you know, and also, I dunno, they use, for instance, many of berries that they find to make sort of a liquor, a tincture. They have them macerate in alcohol, they had had a little sugar. And this thing is called nalewka. And at first it was something that was sort of considered second class backward as leftovers from the past. And now people are crazy about it. There are competitions about nalewka, I’ve been judged in two of these things, which was also an interesting experience because I was telling them, I’ve never dreamed this thing. How can I judge it? And they were like, no, we’re really interested to hear what you have to say as an outsider about this product that for us, it’s really familiar, traditional, how does it register for a foreigner? Turns out I love it. So every time I go, I taste tons of different and all that.

BAF: Another question you’ve touched on somewhat is maybe this is a two part answer, what was the cultural appreciation for food in Poland? Did they have pride such as the Italians or the French doing their food? And how is it now?

Fabio Parasecoli: Very often there was, and there still is this perception that Polish food is heavy. It’s bland. It’s uninteresting, because for decades, that was the food they were exposed to during the socialist time. They didn’t have much to work on. Many traditions were sort of left on the side, but not all of them. Because for instance, when you don’t have enough to eat, foraging becomes important. Fermenting vegetables for the winter becomes important. So they had mounting the traditions, but they’re mostly domestic. They were not part of anything fashionable or trendy, and so they were perceived as backward. And now what’s happening, people are rediscovering their food also publicly, which is interesting. Privately, they still love it and they make it. So on Sunday there will be a specific chicken soup with noodles. They would eat this schabowy, which is short of a pork cutlet, breaded and fried with some sides.

There are soups based on fermented… now I can’t remember. It’s called zurek. But the point is, they did have these traditions, but they were at home and very often they were sort of ashamed of it because they felt they were not modern enough, they were backward, they were unhealthy. And now there a new generation of poles that it’s actually rediscovering these things. In a way, Poland has had this huge economic development. It has developed much faster than other eastern European countries. So you have a new generation of people that make enough money, they travel, they’re exposed to the world, and they would like to see Polish food appreciated as other foreign foods. And so you have restaurants that specialize in Polish food, but they reinterpreted elevated, even if I hate this word, but they presented in ways that reflect this, what we call the cosmopolitan appetite.

BAF: So it sounds like Polish food is a bit of a fork in the road, in the sense that you have the reputation for what it is here and what it’s perceived as and even served as, whereas it sounds, if you were go to Poland now, you would be in a completely different cuisine.

Fabio Parasecoli: Yeah, In the US there are new restaurants that are sort of embracing this new Polish food. If I remember correctly, the name of the restaurant, Apteka in Pittsburgh is one of those. But very often you have the food that was brought by the immigrants decades ago. And so was in many ways still the food of home, but also the food of a different and difficult historical period. And that’s what you find here. But also New York, you can go, I can’t remember the name of the butchers in the East Village. Their store is amazing. They smoke their meats in the back of the store. They prepare the best slanina, which is basically cured pork fat that melts in your mouth. It’s just delicious. It’s just delicious.

So you have some of this, but very often is the food that various generations of Poles and now third, fourth generation have been eating at home. And it’s sort of a derivation and adaptation of what they had brought from Poland, which was already the food of a very specific time period. And so most Americans have no idea of how well you can eat in Poland because they are sort of a victim of the pierogi problem. That’s why we call the book that the fact that there is this rich and varied cuisine, and most people just know one dish…pierogi And then I said, the Poles olls play on that too. I don’t know if you recently saw, there was a Polish astronaut that went into space. The food that he brought and is also sort of advertised, talked about, introduced while he was in space, were pierogi. They found a way to have pierogi in space.

BAF: Well, they probably travel well.

Fabio Parasecoli: I guess. So this thing of the Bargi problem came from the chef at the Polish embassy in London. We were presenting our research there, and he told us, for us also, it’s difficult because we would like to make more original dishes. Dishes that are not well known, maybe flavors that are a little more unusual, but people know pierogi and Kielbasa at most, and that’s about it. So that was his problem, the pierogi trouble.

BAF: So in a nutshell, the pierogi problem is just a reputation you’re stuck with .

Fabio Parasecoli: And the fact that not only the reputation, the limitations of what a cuisine could be just reduced to one single dish.

BAF: Well, I think part of Poland’s problem, well, two things is one is that at least here is the reputation for the food that’s been here for generations. And also as for the country, history aside, they’re surrounded by countries such as Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, Belarus, which they’re just beside of the cuisines of Greece and Italy and France. They’re sort of off to the side down the road a bit.

Fabio Parasecoli: There are all countries that went through 50 years of communist regimes. And so cuisine was not a priority. The priority was to feed the population. Everybody and restaurants or wine production or other niche production just were not a priority. We disappeared. By the way, those cuisines are quite similar, are dishes that you can find versions of pierogi in Ukraine, in Lithuania, in other parts of Eastern Europe, the fermentation parts and whatnot. What’s happening is that Poland has developed much faster than other countries. It’s got a much larger population. Poland has got 40 million people. So it’s a big market

BAF: Actually. I think all those countries could probably fit within Poland.

Fabio Parasecoli: Yeah, the Czech Republic, I don’t know how many millions, but definitely not 40. So even if there is a revaluation and a rediscovery of local cuisine doesn’t have the same impact because there is not the same population, the same visibility. And also they don’t have the same diaspora. There are poles all over the world. There are tons of them. And so whatever happens can have a much larger echo. So now there are tons of Polish authors that are writing Polish cuisine cookbooks that are for everybody, but they know a big audience will be Poles abroad that sometimes don’t even speak Polish, but they are still attached to the family traditions. And so you have books about pierogi, but you also have books about all sorts of things. You’ve got vegetarian polish, you’ve got vegan Polish, because of course there the young people want to eat if they feel like they want to eat vegan and vegetarian, which is politically problematic because for the conservatives, that’s a sign that the national identity is going down the drain and the young generation of being influenced by the rest of the world, while meat should be the center of Polish identity.Well, if you look at history, nobody had access to meat. Only the nobles could meat. But because of this meat had become this symbol of wellbeing of with security. So the moment when they did have access to meat, they went for it with a vengeance. And so now the average pole does eat a lot of meat, but in the cities, you can see in sort of the fashionable circles that eat less or eat vegetable vegan. A few years ago, Warsaw was named the most vegan friendly city in Europe, which is quite a change.

BAF: Yeah, that’s not something you would expect, but I know that there are a lot of vegetarian dishes in Polish food as well.

Fabio Parasecoli: Yes. Traditionally there were a ton, of course, because that’s what farmers could eat.

BAF:  Well, I guess it sounds like from what you said, that maybe there is two big issues that helped revolutionize this movement. One was the arrival or the broadcasting of the Polish version master chef. And to another extent, I think you said the arrival of Michelin was a big thing.

Fabio Parasecoli: Thing. Yeah, those became important because in a way, they showed that Poland could be part of this global circulation of ideas and practices about cuisine. So the fact that there was a gummy EEO guide, now it is been discontinued. During COVID, they became problematic. The Michelin guide still continues. So for them it means that their cuisine has become interesting enough to be recognized by sort of institution of the international culinary establishment. And then for them it’s really relevant.

BAF: Is that an important thing?

Fabio Parasecoli: Yeah,

BAF: For them…

Fabio Parasecoli: Yeah, for them, it’s an important thing. I mean, for professionals, for normal people relatively. But for the culinary field, the fact of being recognized by these international institutions, it’s quite important for them means see Polish food as value. People are starting to recognize it. And when you come to TV shows, this is really part of becoming more integrated in, again, the global circulation of ideas and practices and media about food. So also in Poland, now chefs know that your dish has to be Instagramable, and there must be an Instagramable corner in your restaurant because that’s how you make a name for yourself. So for us, 2012 sort of was an important year in which they started Master Chef. They also had René Redzepi that went to visit Poland. It was an initiative called Cookie Raw. And he toured Poland with Polish chefs trying to rediscover plants and animal breeds that had been forgotten or not used any longer. A little bit what he was doing in Denmark. And of course there were tons of things to discover in Poland because nobody had cared. I mean, again, the little grandmother would know very well because she would go out and forage, but the chefs or the food critics, or they probably wouldn’t know because lots of class, geography reasons and whatnot. And so now you had this important international chef that was looking at all these varieties and this all the stuff that was there.

BAF: Certainly I could see why that would be an important thing. And I don’t know if there was a lot of cooking shows on TV at the time, but to have Master chef appear, if that was a big hit, and that made a difference to viewers.

Fabio Parasecoli: It showed that cuisine was not just the domestic sphere, it was also spectacle. It was culture, it was all of this. And so now there are tons of culinary shows. You have bloggers, you have food influencers. It is just like anywhere else.

BAF: To a certain extent. You’re sorry to hear that, but I see what you said.

Fabio Parasecoli: It’s inevitable. It’s inevitable. Also, there are certain social media like Instagram where you don’t necessarily need to speak English well, you see the images and you get an idea of what school and hot in other places in the world, what people are doing in London, in Paris or in New York. And you can get an idea and you’re like, why can my restaurant be cool? It’s the one in New York.

BAF: Where do you see things going? Just continuing on to the way…

Fabio Parasecoli: I think this will continue. After COVID, there was a major period of inflation, a period of major inflation, you should rather say. And that slowed things down a lot. Lots of restaurant closed, but now it had restarted again. Again, economically, Poland has had a development that it’s quite astonishing. Also within the eu. It is got the facet rate of development, of growth of all those countries. So I think there will be more people that have opportunity to travel to be exposed to this sort of global trends. And they would like to integrate them in their daily lives. And so they might be ready to spend a little more for Polish wine or go to the place that makes that special trout, rather than getting the run of the milk crowd trout, like it happens everywhere. You have a group of what we call taste makers, chefs, writers, scholars, producers that are the engines of this change.But if you don’t have an audience that buys into it, also materially goes to restaurant buys product, drink wine.

It wouldn’t go anywhere, but it’s happening. So I see this trend continuing, which doesn’t mean that they’re not interested in foreign food. There was the ramen craze, which still continues, the kimchi craze. So that apparently a South Korean company decided to choose Poland to start producing kimchi for Europe. And that makes sense because after all, it is a fermented food and it’s something that apart the spices, it’s in their tradition. So it’s their tradition plus spice and people are using tons of it.

BAF: That’s interesting. Well, how do spices go down in Poland?

Fabio Parasecoli: Well, there is also this desire of integrate spices in Poland cuisine because in the past, in the 17th -18th century, Poland was part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, and it was huge. Basically, it went from the Baltic to the Black Sea. And so the upper classes did have access to all sorts of spices from all over the world and also to all sorts of cuisines. So if you read the cookbooks from the 17th – 18th centuries, you see Italian influences, French influences. But of course, that stayed limited to a specific class. It couldn’t trickle down. But now the idea, maybe we should bring back the spices also in everyday food parts as a memory of the past, but partly to make our food more interesting. And as I said, we went into kitchens and whatnot, and we saw people have all sorts of spices and they experiment in their daily cuisine. They want to be original and fun and all of that.

BAF: So it is becoming more integrated into the everyday food.

Fabio Parasecoli: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Although for a certain, it’s again, a question of class or where you live. If you’re, you’re talking to farmers in the middle of the countryside, they would be horrified to eat anything like with chili pepper. But in cities it works.

BAF: Then spreads out a bit. Well, that’s always the case.

Fabio Parasecoli: I think. Yeah.

BAF: Well, so I guess I’ll just wrap it up by asking, so what’s next for you? Any other works in the work in progress you can talk about?

Fabio Parasecoli: Right now, these days, I’m really revising an article that looks at the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on global trade, a global wheat trade. And so I started working in the past with various Eastern European scholars, and now I’m collaborating with this Romanian that works in Berlin. And we’re trying to see how the war has impacted farming in Eastern Europe in general, not only in Ukraine, but also the fact that much of the Ukrainian wheat now is sort of shipped through land by land to the rest of the world. So it ends up in Poland, in the Czech Republic, in Lithuania, depressing the local prices of wheats of farmers are not happy. But at the same time, there are global consequences because grain from Ukraine used to go to many developing countries, and now for one year, one year and a half prices spike, they didn’t know where to get the wheat. Russia is trying to sell that wheat also as a tool of geopolitical strategy. So that’s what I’m working on right now.

 

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“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