PHỞ tasting party

PHỞ SOUP is a very popular vietnamese dish, but the tasting will also include several daily meals that the vietnamese cook/manager of an asian restaurant in Bytom cooked for himself and shared with me during the last week. These recipes are usually a compromise between polish-silesian ingredients and the vietnamese comfort food. They challenge the concept of exoticism, extensively using tomatoes and local cabbage, but they also introduce flavours that are radically alien to european contemporary cuisine, such as a fermented fish sauce called NƯỚC MẮM.
All the dishes that will be served are not present on the written menu of restaurant.

THE EVENT IS FREE, BUT RESERVATION IS REQUIRED (mail@kronika.org.pl or (32)2818133).
FEAR IS BANNED.

(IF YOU ARE VEGETARIANS WE SUGGEST YOU TO CONTACT KRONIKA FOR OTHER “SECRET” EVENTS THAT WILL SOON TAKE PLACE)

And a forward form the Artist himself:

I spent the last days in conversations with people here in Bytom. Beneath the layers of Polish and Silesian cuisine I tried to dig out the culinary traces of communities that vanished from this region, or that ended up here as a consequence of forced migrations. These dishes survived in the shadow, enclosed in very specific social contexts or hidden in the family practices – sometimes just in the memory of single individuals.

These recipes, saved from the disasters of the last century, are always marked by an intergenerational feature:

usually special dishes prepared by the grandmother – either lost or to-be-re-enacted following very specific procedures, as in the alchemic dream, to turn a nourishment into a fragment of the Self.

But my attention was dragged also by the contemporary forms of food displacements, as in the case of current migrations. Although not being a major target of migrations, Bytom is not a bubble out of space and time. And a single migrant brings with him a world of difference and
food habits that connect him with his origins, like for some secret, old recipe from German or Lvivian descendants. But

food is projected into the future, constantly adapting to our biological and cultural needs:

fresh forces and new ideas are everyday embodied in food practices. Is the case of lentil-based “pelmeni” created by Belorussian Rastafari in Katowice – as I heard from a friend.

The intervention consists in a series of food events that will take place in Bytom.

1. Uncontrolled Denominations – Anarchistyczna Pierogarnia, a playful
collective food action hosted by …

2. Vietnamese Phở tasting party – Between national Vietnamese dishes and
the comfort, daily food of the cook of an Asian restaurant in Bytom.

And other “secret” events…