The renaissance of locality – how does it manifest itself in a fine dining experience?

Fine dining is a holistic experience that consists mainly of a sophisticated serving of dishes made with imagination from high-quality products, as well as luxurious room decoration, elegant, beautiful tableware and first-class service. This trend towards Polish culinary culture came from the west of Europe and has been inspiring it for more than 10 years. This is painstaking attention to the refinement of every detail, both on and off the plate.

In fine dining restaurants, portions have a tasting dimension and are served in elaborate sequences designed to surprise and delight. This allows guests to travel back in time, to the history of a particular product, or-which is very often the case when local products are used-to their own culinary memories from childhood. Such a tasting is sometimes combined with a story about what the chef serves. Best of all, he personally tells guests what efforts he and his team have made to get certain local slow foods and ingredients in their kitchen, and then with what pietism they have been processed to hit the guests ' plate.

Source: Kamil Kotarski

Polish fine dining and local products 

In Poland, there is a growing market for local products that go on sale and, therefore, on our plates, also in fine dining restaurants. We are no longer ashamed of Polish products, dishes and traditions. We fondly remember our grandmother's cakes or our mothers ' dishes. We look for our own farmers or producers, from whom we buy vegetables, eggs, dairy products, meat, join food cooperatives, visit markets, markets, food events, buy books about the vegetarian version of Polish cuisine or go to cooking workshops with nettles. Or at least we choose products labeled "bio".

Why does it attract us to local products 

Local products are those that are produced on a small scale by a manufacturer that is usually very well known and popular among locals in the area. They are made from local raw materials and with attention to the natural environment, as well as aesthetically packaged or displayed. Produced on a small scale using traditional, proven methods such as cooking, baking, smoking, drying, stewing, pressing – without flavor improvers and chemicals, without mass production typical of the typical food industry. What distinguishes them from mass-produced products? First of all, a quality that gives a unique taste, often a traditional or historical name, and limited availability. You need to know where and to whom to go to try them. You must make an effort to get them for the restaurant kitchen. What distinguishes them from mass production is that the manufacturer can touch any of the products that he produces from his company – take care of its quality, treat himself. His personal involvement and often his family (because they are often family companies) is nothing more than a big heart invested in the entire process of creating a product. It is clear that we are drawn to this. 

This is what chefs are also looking for. Both for our own professional development and for more commercial reasons-to encourage us to visit restaurants.Chefs and restaurateurs strive for local products. Their quality combined with modern culinary techniques, such as, for example, the currently popular sous vide cooking method and using modern equipment, allow you to achieve the best combination of modernity and tradition. 

Photo: Kamil Kotarski

It's time for a local Renaissance!

When we were kids, products that we now call unique because of their locality were on the agenda. Our mothers and grandmothers made cheeses and put cottage cheese, and every Sunday there was yeast dough. Grandparents hurried, smoked, fished, and picked mushrooms. All this made up the locality and regionality of our cuisine, created New traditions. In the fall, we ate beets, potatoes, and carrots, and in the spring, we ate novaliki, which had just grown up, and eggs, because the chickens were more tolerant. We miss it and look for it in restaurants or at events related to cuisine. And chefs and restaurant owners, often with considerable difficulty, purchase these products for us or open their own gardens at restaurants where they grow their own vegetables and herbs. Pickle and sour fruits and vegetables, dry them, smoke them, or roast them over a live fire… An inspiring example is ham with carp. Yes, ham, but not pork, just cooked on the basis of carp, which is a very healthy fish raised in a slow-food style, because it requires very high aquaculture, a natural way of eating and a long maturation period. It takes at least 3 years before the carp gets on our tables. The ham is obtained from such high-quality raw materials as our Polish king carp and smoked in Alder smoke for several hours at low temperature, then cooled and cut into slices. Served with pickled mushrooms, sea buckthorn, elderberry vinegar, hulk and goat curd, for example, can delight and encourage guests to take a trip along the culinary trail to different regions of the world in search of this type of craft food. 

The value of using local products in the kitchens of first-class restaurants lies in maintaining the cultural identity that cooking is an integral part of. Chefs are inspired to reach out to their heritage, show it anew, and process it in their own way. This gives us the opportunity to keep in mind the tastes that we associate with ancient times and childhood. Fine dining restaurants attach great importance to the quality of the product, ecology in its production and processing, and take care of our tastes and the environment with equal care.