When we think about different countries or major cities from around the world, we can usually tie a particular dish or food to them: pizza from Naples, ramen from Japan, tapas from Seville, mole from Oaxaca.
How these foods became known as national dishes in their respective countries is at the heart of food writer Anya Von Bremzen’s newest book, National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home. Bremzen is a James Beard Award-winning writer of food and travel books, and cookbooks.
In a recent What We're Reading interview Bremzen explained her goal with National Dish was to explore how popular dishes become tied to place and identity, and how are they faring in the age of globalization, noting the widespread availability of foods like pizza and ramen.
“It just shows how food is so complicated and so fascinating and symbolic of so many things."Anya Von Bremzen
"How does the connection to place remain so vital and powerful and symbolic?" Bremzen asked.
The aptly named “pizza effect” plays a role in food as a connection to place.
Bremzen explained how the term was coined by anthropologist Agehananda Bharati to describe how globalization can make something once considered unpopular in its orginating region, popular. An example of this is how yoga wasn't originally very popular in India or pizza in Italy until they first became popular in the United States.
“It just shows how food is so complicated and so fascinating and symbolic of so many things,” Bremzen said.
Bremzen noted originally she had a different epilogue in mind for National Dish. But as she concluded her research and writing in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and she knew the book would have to end on a different note.
As a Russian-Jew who immigrated to the United States, Bremzen said she has been deeply affected by this war.
A pot of her mother's borscht in her freezer suddenly became a symbol of food appropriation and division. Bremzen grew up in Russia eating the bright red beet soup, but she now knows through her research that Ukraine has a larger claim to its origins.
To Bremzen, Russia's invasion of Ukraine mirrored their appropriation of borscht.
"Ukraine is under brutal assault and defending their traditions and their cultural history. The borscht was this bright red and really tragic symbol of it," Bremzen said.
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