It is a small world after all, and from the culinary perspective, it is getting steadily smaller as shifting migration patterns reshape local cuisines.

The extent to which conventional food traditions are being remade to reflect contemporary geopolitical realities was the focus of the most recent Worlds of Flavor Conference convened last month by the Culinary Institute of America at the Copia campus in Napa, Calif. This year’s edition, entitled Borders, Migration and the Evolution of Culinary Tradition, featured world-class chefs, authors and subject experts, who shone a light on the shape-shifting vitality of the global foodservice landscape.

The confab provided useful insights and bracing reality checks. Three big-picture trends in particular emerged, with surprising takeaways that can help restaurants and menu developers stay at the forefront of industry changes.

1

Americans don’t have a lock on the melting pot

Photo Credit: Culinary Institute of America

In the inaugural presentation, Jordan Ezra King traced the origins of spaghetti and tomato sauce back farther than its assumed Italian roots.

While we are justifiably proud of the diversity and dynamism of our food scene, numerous speakers showed how multicultural forces have shaped dishes and dining patterns around the world for a very, very long time.

The inaugural presenter was London-based Jordon Ezra King, a culinary archeologist of sorts. He prepared a deceptively familiar spaghetti-and-tomato-sauce dish, and in so doing, shared its origin story, totally upending the romantic idea of the “authentic” Italianate staple. He explained that pasta was actually introduced to Sicily by Arab groups about a thousand years ago; the dish took root on the island before moving steadily up the mainland peninsula. Tomatoes made their way to Southern Italy in the 1700s, thanks to the Spanish, who brought the savory fruit from the New World to the Old. The two made-for-each-other ingredients finally joined together near modern-day Naples in what is the Campania region.

But the centuries-old marriage of these ingredients isn’t the end of the story. What truly set the dish on its trajectory to international ubiquity was yet another migration, namely the massive influx of Southern Italians to the East Coast of the U.S. It was the Italian-American kitchen that became the launching pad for spaghetti pomodoro, catapulting it onto the world dining stage.

2

Old World is really old—except when it’s new

Photo Credit: Culinary Institute of America

Polish chef and restaurateur Aleksander Baron discussed the post-Soviet culinary renaissance in his home country, including the emergence of “Pole-Viet” mashups.

In an engaging session and a first for the conference, Polish cuisine took center stage. It was presented by a pair of its star practitioners, Tomasz Skowronski, co-chef and co-owner of Apteka in Pittsburgh, PA, and Aleksander Baron, chef and co-owner of Kapłony I Szczeżuje in Krakow, Poland. Baron, an articulate advocate for his national gastronomy, explained that its rich history stretches back centuries to incorporate the diverse influences of the Tatars, Ashkenazi Jews, Austrian and Hungarian kitchens and more.

Currently in the midst of a post-Soviet renaissance, chefs are rediscovering traditional Polish cookery and celebrating its classic techniques like smoking, foraging and fermenting. Baron himself demonstrated the powerful appeal of the latter in żurek, a traditional soup made of fermented rye flour, cream and mushrooms—the acquisition of which he characterized as the Polish national sport. Plated simply with hardboiled egg and freshly grated horseradish, the dish has a soul-soothing, universal appeal.

Time doesn’t stand still, however, even in the kitchens of Poland; Baron described the dramatic uptick of Asian restaurants that has taken place over the past 20 years. This cultural influx has invigorated the culinary world, yielding such mashups as “Pole-Viet” cuisine, as he puts it, courtesy of newly arrived Vietnamese. These immigrant communities have adopted local ingredients and adapted their standard dishes to appeal to their new neighbors, thereby following in the time-honored culinary footsteps of prior waves of invaders and immigrants.

3

Successful culinary crossover keeps things simple

Photo Credit: Culinary Institute of America

Cookbook author Kiano Moju emphasized the importance of adapting cuisines with ingredients at hand for inspired yet uncomplicated new dishes.

Kiano Moju is a Los Angeles-based culinary educator and author who wholeheartedly debunked the notion that international cuisine must be difficult, complicated or off-putting to be considered authentic or appealing to a new audience.

Moju’s mother hails from Kenya and her father is from Nigeria, while she herself is California-born and bred. The combination of her African heritage plus her American upbringing inspired her to write AfriCali: Recipes From My Jikoni. In her cookbook, she asserts the benefit of using at-hand ingredients that are familiar, accessible and recognizable, opening the door to rich cycles of trial and experimentation.

This commonsense approach was echoed throughout the conference and illustrated its underlying theme: The creative tension between old and new, foreign and familiar, past and present, is healthy, desirable and a necessary ingredient in the continuing evolution of vibrant culinary cultures.