Paper short abstract:

The food of supposedly Mittel-European origins has in the past few years flooded the culinary landscape of Trieste. This turn is connected to a wider shift in the interpretations of Trieste’s identity that evoke the local history of the Habsburg Empire and its “cosmopolitanism”.

Paper long abstract:

My title is an adaptation of a more famous one composed by the recently deceased Sidney Mintz indicating the significance of the food choices that humans make. My case study investigates the nostalgia for the Habsburg Empire in 21st-century Trieste. More precisely, it traces it on the "typical" Triestine plates.

The phenomenon that has been the focus of my latest ethnographic endeavours reveals itself as a metamorphosis on Trieste's menus. The typically Italian pasta, pizza and tiramisu have been replaced by strudel, goulash and sauerkraut that supposedly reveal the true identity of this port city. Such dishes recall the flourishing times of the 19th century when Trieste reached its highpoint as a part of the Habsburg Empire. The times when Trieste existed as a cosmopolitan and liberal island, which significantly transformed only in the late 19th century when nationalism divided the city into Slovenian and Italian. Then the city forgot its "true" culturally diverse identity that nowadays many of its inhabitants try to highlight.

Along these lines also the culinary enthusiasts prefer to emphasize the Habsburg or Mittel-European character of the Triestine cuisine and promote it as culturally distinctive from the traditional Italian one. These enthusiasts promote dishes that stress Trieste's Austrian or Hungarian origins and its belonging to Central Europe; in the process they ignore some dishes' fundamental Slavic roots.

This presentation seeks to give an overview of Trieste's culinary nostalgia and to recognize it as a result of a broader shift in the local identity.