I believe that everyone has at least one culinary cultural tale inside them. Some, have many more. Such tales often begin with something like, “If you go into city centre, make sure you get something to eat at…” Put the tales together and we start to create a city’s culinary cultural story book.
Food as culture
Here I offer a framework for people to come together and create a rounded, culinary cultural story for a town or city that they know well and care about. A town or city’s culinary culture is more than its range of restaurants or perhaps new street food scene. Like all things cultural, it is taken to be ‘of the place and its people’, with the ability to offer something different from the ‘norm’ for both residents and visitors.
The story of a city’s culinary culture will cover its distinct food and drink profile, encompassing dishes, ingredients, dining customs and diners’ tastes. Such a culinary culture is not just about high-end restaurants, though also everyday eating habits, street vendors, and even shops and supplies for home cooking.
What’s important in creating a city’s culinary cultural story is to keep it real. Don’t feel you need to weave in elements that aren’t there. One traditional pie and mash shop, a market stall selling local produce or an explanation of the prevalence of chai cafes, is enough to start the story. Building blocks for your city’s culinary cultural story might include some or all the following:
Cultural tradition
Traditional dishes: The most obvious part of your city’s culinary cultural story is if it still has traditional foods, drinks or culinary practices that reflect the community’s history, tastes, producers or rural roots and values. Think Bury black pudding, Melton Mowbray pork pies, Cromer crab or Staffordshire oatcakes.
Local brews: Regional and hyper-local beers have had a resurgence; cider shares its appeal across a variety of western English towns and Scottish whisky and Irish whiskey vintages have global followings attached to rural communities. The pub of course is a British icon, and each town or city will retain its authentic watering holes, with local variations in architecture, local brews and social norms.
Sustaining supplies: Butchers, bakers, greengrocers, a dwindling number of fishmongers, street markets, indoor markets and three decades of farmers markets, can retain and re-establish links to local produce including raw ingredients. Food and drink festivals can be part of celebrating produce and producers, locally-inspired dishes and creative chefs.
Re-inventing products: Not every city can serve-up such traditional gems and neither does ‘one stilton make a summer’. In some towns and cities, culinary entrepreneurs are reasserting, or reinventing, rural links, as I found with branded burgers, cured beef and black pudding benedicts for breakfast whilst working in Hereford.
Re-assserting customs: Elsewhere, serving quality versions of regional or national dishes broadens the cultural appeal, such as through award-winning fish and chips, or afternoon teas with a local twist. Cockles on the sea front and or even picnics in a park, offer some cultural value if we step back far enough.
Cultural currency
There is also lots of currency in how your town or city’s culinary cultural story is evolving in a way that is distinctive and adds new vibrancy. Food can be a way of celebrating cultural diversity, fostering social connections and showing a community’s values.
Migrant mix: Perhaps most dynamic amongst this is how as people migrate, they bring their culinary traditions, which might stay authentic to their origins or adopt elements of the host city’s cuisine to create a vibrant fusion. In many U.K. towns and cities, this collectively reflects the diverse cultural makeup and a new chapter of their culinary cultural stories. Just from recent work trips, I can think of Nepalese banqueting halls in Aldershot, the curiosity of chai cafes in Oldham, and the culinary mix of the Leeds Road in Bradford that reaches beyond the city’s ‘curry capital’ reputation.
Street food customs: Another changing current eating and drinking phenomenon in many U.K. towns and cities, and elsewhere, is the advent of alfresco hospitality and food courts/markets. Whilst a change in customs in their own right, I’d suggest that their cultural value is heightened when by a combination of traditional and migrant cuisine, blended with the experimentation of local culinary creatives, that add something in experience and menus that is distinctive to the place. Chicken wings and Aperol spritz don’t cut it as a cultural experience for me.
The much-heralded Altrincham Market House still sets a high bar that others have sought to follow. Its line-up of 10 independent food operators includes rare breed grilled meats, craft beers, award winning pies and locally roasted coffee alongside international influences. Mackie Mayor, Bury Market or Stockport’s Produce Hall all beckon too, as perhaps a Greater Manchester culinary culture tour on the Bee Line.
Addressing food poverty: Another side of a city’s culinary cultural story is how it is addressing the challenges of food poverty that can be caused by low income, limited access to transport, or poor cooking skills. According to government sources, 7.5 million people in the UK were living in households experiencing ‘food poverty’ in 2023-24.
A city’s culinary story needs to leave room to tell the tales of how food inequality is being tackled by initiatives such as the “Queen of Greens”, a mobile greengrocer in a converted ambulance which serves social housing tenants in areas of highest need, known as ‘food deserts’.
Cultural future
Like all good stories, your city’s culinary cultural narrative, needs to look to develop future plot twists. Are we destined to see a reduced sense of culinary adventure as accountants select menus in the belief that diners seek homogeneity or is there room for backing a cook’s creativity and leaving room for experimentation.
U.K. Government policy has recently announced backing for hospitality and creative industries, though it doesn’t appear to connect the two, and city cultural development strategies rarely give a mention to food. Here, I hand over the narrative to two kindred spirits with tales of culinary cultural development to tell.
A Stockport tale
Firstly, Esther Morrison of Paprika Placemakers, shares the story of Stockport’s Foodie Fridays that she created in 2013. In her work, Esther emphasises the importance of bringing culinary culture out of hiding by supporting start-ups by offering affordable on-street trading. She recognises that many of the most innovative, new (to the country and to cooking) cooks cannot afford bricks and mortar. Where food strategies are being prepared, Esther stresses the need to strive to be inclusive of communities with reduced English.
From its experimental origins, Stockport’s Foodie Friday has become an institution that has given new experiences and helped refresh perceptions of the Old Town, with food featuring as part of its wider, contemporary culture. On the last Friday evening of the month, Stockport Market hosts street food, craft ales and live music. The event is enjoyed by residents and visitors, both for its food and its relaxed, sociable atmosphere.
Esther explains that Stockport’s ‘foodie’ reputation was not spontaneous, but born on the back of the creation of a place-specific food culture in the town. This included celebrating the 750th anniversary of granting the town’s market charter through the creation of a Stockport Chesire Cheese, handmade “Tiddlypig” sausages combining local pork and ale, and the “Earl’s Supper” sandwich combining locally-reared venison and bread baked in Cheadle.
A Stoke story
Cris Cohen, founder of F E A S T E D and the Total Hospitality Experience (THE) in Stoke-on-Trent, coincidentally began his culinary cultural tale in the city with an exploration of the connections to existing products. This included Staffordshire oatcakes, oats and barley, a strong beer making tradition and a beef stew called lobby that was traditionally eaten by poorly-paid potters.
This formed the foundation for running F E A S T E D as a kitchen studio for 8 years in an old pot bank in the heart of the former pottery towns. It provided a dining experience that celebrated the city’s heritage by creating dishes that are of the place. Diners shared stories of the past and spoke of where the future of the city might lie. Through its Community Interest Company, F E A S T E D used the kitchen for self-development workshops that often involved working with those hardest to reach and who complex backgrounds.
Through THE, Cris maintains his commitment to hospitality education and mentorship which he believes is a crucial part of the development of a cook and chef. This includes contextual learning of ingredients, geography or cultural references. In conversation with Cris, he ends where I have begun: “Having grown up in the Peak District I know that the rich context of history and industry provides a substantial serving of storytelling about food to engage diners. Storytelling at a table where people eat is provocative, connecting and can be part of place making. Dining like this can anchor the identity of people and place”.
Food as a part of a city’s wider culture and identity
This blog is the first in a wider series that will look at the culture of towns and cities and how it is portrayed as p[art of their identity and place band. We started with food and drink because it seems often overlooked as part of a city’s cultural portrayal and development, and yet it is prominent in how we portray places popularly. Like us, you don’t have to wait until all the pieces of a place’s culture and wider identity have been gathered together, to start telling a city’s culinary cultural story. By starting by sharing a place’s culinary story, you can create intrigue and offer insights that are likely to resonate with the portrayals of the wider culture and identity of the place.
Further reading
Read about People & Places’ approach to portraying place identity in this article about ‘branding that gets under the skin of a place‘ or our approach to ‘promoting pride in place through progress’ using place branding communications skills.
People & Places are authors of the Local Government Association’s revitalising town centres toolkit and regularly provide natioal policy insights including most recently in this analysis of the ‘place policy puzzle‘.
