KNEDLÍKY [knead-leaky] – traditional Czech dumplings. They usually come as a very filling side dish. Sometimes, they are served as a sweet main dish with fruits inside and all kinds of delicious stuff on top.
Photo by Jan Žaloudek
Welcome!
This is not a typical food blog but you might still learn a thing or two about food if you follow my Food Scholar’s Digest.
I’m a cultural anthropologist interested in how we experience the world through food. I study gastronomy, luxury hospitality, haute cuisine, service work and consumption practices.
Originally from former Czechoslovakia, I’m interested in hospitality and gastronomy in the context of political and economic transformation. During socialism, not only were restaurants and hotels owned by the state, the state also dictated what categories of restaurants there should be and what meals they should serve so that one would eat the same thing wherever they were within the country. This has had a profound and long-lasting influence on hospitality industry that has not been studied by social scientists. That’s why I decided to do my research and find out answers to these questions: How have hospitality industry and gastronomy transformed since the Velvet Revolution? What happened to waiters who were trained under socialism in vocational schools and what are the career trajectories of their younger colleagues? Why do Czech experts on gastronomy educate people on how to enjoy food?
Having done ethnographic research in some of the best restaurants in the country, I’m also interested in various ways that we can use high cuisine to teach us about creativity, innovation, production of experiences and creation of value, and how we can use cooking, food and hospitality to enhance creativity and innovation in areas outside gastronomy. It is an attempt to search for something that would satisfy Ferran Adrià, who said:
I want to eat something that doesn’t exist. …
bon appétit
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