Food lovers to get together at gastronomy symposium

THE DUBLIN Institute of Technology is to host a major gastronomy symposium where food researchers and enthusiasts can talk food.

Modelled on the celebrated Oxford Food Symposium, now in its 31st year, the Dublin event is designed to attract gastronomic researchers and good food enthusiasts and follows an initial Gastronomy Day run in IT Tallaght two years ago by Brian Murphy and Dr Eamon Maher.

The title of the event is Gastronomy: Past, Present and Future, a brief which allows for the broadest interpretation of the word and its multidisciplinary aspects.

That means it will cover not only the history of food and drink along with domestic and professional cookery practice, but also the societal impact of gastronomy and references in literature, media and popular culture.

More than 30 papers will be delivered over the two days on a wide range of food-related themes with keynote speaker Darra Goldstein, founding editor and editor in chief of Gastronomica magazine and the author of four cookery books attending from the US. She will also be joined by Carolin Young, the US art historian and former organiser of the Oxford Food Symposium who leads culinary tours in Paris based on Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris).

The chairman of the DGS organising committee is Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, who was awarded Ireland’s first PhD on food history in 2009 for his thesis on the history of Dublin restaurants.

In 2010 he, along with Pádraic Óg Gallagher of Gallagher’s Boxty House in Dublin, presented a very successful gala Irish banquet at the Oxford Food Symposium.

“Ireland is a food leader. People look to us for ideas and inspiration. We are now on an international stage,” he said.

The symposium takes place in the school of culinary arts and food technology, DIT Cathal Brugha Street in Dublin on June 5th and 6th.