A Moveable Feast
The people and highlights of the third Food & Society Conference in Paris
Typically a minefield for explosive debates and disputes, the concept of ‘indigeneity’ (the quality of being indigenous or native to one place) was tackled with grace and wisdom during the third Food & Society Conference—the first to be held outside Kuala Lumpur, and in Paris no less, the gatekeeper of Western gastronomy. “It took some time, but we finally worked up the courage to organise something like this,” commented Professor Datuk Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, founding director of the Institute of Ethnic Studies headquartered at the National University of Malaysia. “This is the first time the conference has been held abroad for one simple reason: human resources. But that’s the importance of having friends such as Eric Olmedo.” Respected researcher and organising committee chair Olmedo said: “This year and the last have been very auspicious years for Malaysian gastronomy. Back in 2017,
chefs Ryunosuke Naito and his Malaysian spouse Kwen Liew opened Pertinence restaurant in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. In 2018, they were granted one Michelin star, which they retained in 2019. In January 2019 in Lyon, the Malaysian team won the gold medal of the world Pastry Cup for the first time in history. Both events were geographically connected to France. That is
one of the reasons we felt the need to come over to the French capital: for Malaysia and Australasian scholarship to be part and parcel of this momentum.” Intellectuals from Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Japan, Lebanon, Singapore and the USA tackled the theme of ‘indigeneity’ via the social glue of food: pastry, pickles, bakuteh, sushi, wine, ulam—how do these foods tie into our societies and what do they say about us? While it is impossible to iterate each and every paper here, those that touch on our motherland include: Being Peranakan— State of Research & State of Affairs; The Ulam School Project—reconnecting with Edible Flora To Attenuate Public Health Crisis In Malaysia, Cambodia & Vietnam; The Cooking Methods Of Ethnic Food Among Aborigines Social Groups; Of Deities, Ancestors and Ghosts—the Ritual Food Offerings In The Hungry Ghost Food Festival; Measuring Social Cohesion In Malaysia—the Spatial Practice Of Eating Out; and more. So much talk of food and drink was guaranteed to stir appetites, hence a sumptuous gala dinner prepared by students of the Institute of Gastronomy at the University of Cergy-pontoise; cooking demonstrations by culinary greats Pascal Barbot of L’astrance (2 Michelin stars) and Darren Teoh of Dewakan (the first Malaysian restaurant to make it onto the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list); serene tea ceremonies carried out in the traditional Japanese way by Keiko Imamura; and tasty lunchboxes laid out by the culinary design team at the Institute of Gastronomy. Equal parts educational and enjoyable, the Food & Society Conference allowed keen observers to rub shoulders with roving academics in multiple prestigious venues, including the historical auditoriums of Sorbonne University and La Cour du Marais, a medieval private mansion-turned-event space. Keen on attending the fourth Food & Society Conference in Vietnam in 2020? Kindly visit food-and-society.com for further information.
“This year and the last have been very auspicious years for Malaysian gastronomy”