









































Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

The “Authentic” Blend: 
Experts Weigh in on Istrian Food

By: Daša Ličen

Abstract

This article examines the discourses and concepts of regional Istrian 
gourmet heroes, who bring into being and distribute ideas on what 
“authentic” Istrian cuisine is. Citizens of three different countries who 
speak four different languages, these experts consider themselves most of 
all Istrian and characterize Istrian foods as alternative foods in contrast to 
mainstream agro-industrial varieties. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, 
this essay focuses on how these experts arbitrarily use adjectives such as 
“authentic,” “traditional,” “natural” and others in overlapping ways which 
I will show create obstacles to labelling the precise terminology of each. 
Ultimately I argue that these descriptors are all interchangeable in the 
experts’ discourse(s) on Istrian food, furthermore denoting Istrian food 
itself, although most of the time they absolutely do not mean the same. This 
mishmash is nowadays one of the main elements unifying the Istrian region 
as such, and while similarly present in many different places, Istria’s food 
movement is unique, because of its geographical and historical contexts.

Key terms: Istria, alternative foodways, experts, 
authenticity, region, Mediterranean diet.

Introduction

Experts like to put the word Istrian before the name of a recipe to denote 
that the dish belongs specifically to the Istrian region of Italy, Slovenia, and 
Croatia, or they use some other positive adjective to reconfirm the quality 
of the product. Dishes thus carry names such as “good homemade bread,” 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

which instantly make it better than ordinary “bread.” For example, at an 
event called Novigrad Scallop Evening (Večer novigradske kapešante), which 
occurs in Novigrad on Croatia’s Istrian coast, the term kapešante is used 
whenever organizers talk about scallops. But the term is in fact not Croatian, 
nor is it Slovene or Italian, the national languages one would expect to find 
on this peninsula; it exists only in the Istrian dialect. The organizers could of 
course have used other expressions for these shellfish, but opted for a regional 
term highlighting the Istrian character of these delicacies. This use of the 
term further implies that these are not just any scallops, but a particular 
scallop species that the inimitable Istrian waters produce. According to the 
organizers of the event, kapešante are also tasty and healthful, embodying the 
Istrian genius loci. They are allegedly even better when prepared with some 
Istrian olive oil and washed down with local wine. Novigrad’s parochialism 
thus does not seem to stand against the region, but is rather a part of it.

I have never been particularly curious about Istrian food, even though 
I grew up on the Istrian coast. To be honest, I only recall thinking more 
about it when I first started to travel in my teenage years and was every 
so often invited to international dinners. I was always asked to prepare a 
Slovenian dish. As I leafed through books and scrolled through internet 
pages, I realized there are apparently many Slovenian dishes I have never 
tasted. I thus decided to cook one that I would actually eat on a regular 
basis and then realized it was rather more Istrian than Slovenian, more 
regional than national.1 The puzzle was intriguing enough for me to write 
my master’s thesis on the subject of what is Istrian food (Ličen 2015).

After my first ethnographic steps, I realized that in Istria particular 
connoisseurs can be discerned, I call them food experts, who play strong roles 
in an Istrian regional culinary movement and deserve special attention.2 In 
my ethnographic study, which took place in Spring and Summer 2015, I thus 
attended culinary events all over the region, conducted around 15 in-depth 
interviews with these experts, talked to many more people, listened to the 
experts’ lectures, and in general tried to keep track of their culinary careers 
in any way possible. This article examines how these regional gourmet heroes 
articulate and disseminate ideas on what “authentic” Istrian cuisine is.3 Through 
public discourse(s), this social group uses its power to assert a strong influence 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

on the wider public’s food-related thinking and actions (Van Dijk 1997).

Photo 1. Map of Istria shows adjacent nation-state jurisdictions and 
suggests the complexity of historical, cultural, and political influences. 
Original work by Markus Bernet is in the Public Domain courtesy of 
www.demis.nl (accessed April 2017 through Wikimedia Commons).

Istria, a peninsula in the northern Adriatic, is a region currently divided among 
three different countries—Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy—but it is one of those 
areas where systems of meaning do not necessarily correspond to national 
or ethnic or linguistic borders (Photo 1). More unity can be found within the 
geographical region of Istria than within each of the three nation states that 
divide it, and for that reason the region is a relevant framework for this study. 
The food experts I studied variably represent the three different countries and 
speak four different languages. But they consider themselves to be most of all 
Istrian, and they hold very similar attitudes about Istrian food. As a result of 
“modern accelerated dietary changes”4 the food discourse in the region has 
been transforming for at least the past 20 years. My research partners stand 
in opposition to “modernity” and “junk food” of the mainstream, and seek to 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

reconnect local food producers with consumers as they believe occurred in the 
past. The alternative they advocate, however, represents a confusing mishmash 
of Istrian food discourses, as is clearly evident on a local TV show, for example.

Photo 2.  Shooting the segment of “La barca dei sapori” with the hosts 
Marino and Martina Vocci; Anton Meden, local history expert; Gianfranco 
Abrami, photographer; and Klara and Drago Marić, local pasta manufacturers. 
The hosts in this particular segment emphasized that the ancient tradition 
of pasta does not stop at the Italian border, but that they make a high 
quality pasta also in the village of Canfanaro/Kanfanar in the very heart of 
Istria. Canfanaro/Kanfanar, 13 October 2014. Photo: Courtesy of Facebook 
profile of TV show “La barca dei sapori” (accessed 13 January 2017).

TV Capodistria, a Slovene public television station targeting the Istrian 
region and Italy’s neighboring Julian March, hosts a weekly show in 
which a ten-minute segment is devoted to local culinary traditions (Photo 
2). The section La barca dei sapori (literally, “the boat of flavors”) is not 
limited exclusively to Istria, but mostly broadcasts from there. Each week 
the show’s team of local food experts heads to an “authentic” enough 
place where they introduce viewers to selected local traditions. As one of 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

the host food experts whom I had recognized and interviewed put it:

. . . we seek to follow the seasons, we present what is 
seasonal, regional (territorial), typical. It would be hard 
to find a pineapple from the Maldives in our shows and 
traditions. We first research what’s to be found in the 
place we visit, the dishes that were eaten a hundred years 
ago. . . . We’ve never been to McDonald’s, you know.

Not only for the hosts of this show, but for Istrian food experts in general, 
long-established Istrian cuisine is a means for a person or an entire region 
to break free of all perceived unhealthy, overly modern, dangerous, fake, and 
artificial food practices, often symbolized by McDonald’s, as mentioned above.

My case study draws from Jeff Pratt’s (2007) work on alternative food 
movements and their over-simplification of the contrast between mainstream 
and alternative foodways. My article seeks to supplement Pratt’s work modestly 
by examining a particular example of the synonymous use of unlike food 
qualities that is evident in the Istrian food experts’ discourses. The regional 
gourmet experts I studied include chefs, cooks, journalists, writers, and festival 
organizers, who are considered to be knowledgeable when it comes to Istrian 
food. This article focuses on their arbitrary use of positive adjectives such as 
authentic, traditional, natural, and others, which I will elaborate and discuss in 
the following paragraphs. The interchangeable uses of these adjectives within 
the discourses on Istrian food create obstacles to defining the terms precisely 
and distinctly. Yet, at the end of the day, they merge under the “master-
signifier” of Istrian food, where authentic is the most encompassing term, the 
kernel of the culinary discourses within Istria. My ethnographic experiences 
indeed proved that authentic frequently served as a code word for all the other 
positive adjectives ascribed to Istrian food. “Authenticity” is then a sort of 
Moebius strip on which all the terms endlessly overlap but have one broader 
meaning, namely, the “splendid” assortment of Istrian culinary characteristics.

To address food experts’ attempts to immortalize something as perishable 
as food and to establish it as an authentic mixture, I will introduce 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

the Istrian food “cocktail” by briefly discussing key terms—authentic, 
traditional, healthy, ecological, organic, alternative market—their referents, 
the nuances of Istrian food discourses, and some theoretical perspective. 
As this mélange of positive terms and concepts builds on the rhetorical 
opposition between mainstream agro-industrial food markets and 
alternative food movements, I will bracket my discussion between the two 
oppositional contexts, beginning first with perceptions of the mainstream 
food system, and contemplating alternative food movements at the end. 

The Mainstream Food System

The Industrial Revolution did not take place in an instant, nor was it unrelated 
to previous historical events, yet this revolution signifies a break between the 
traditional and the modern, a transformation of a structure (Sewell 2005). The 
transition to new manufacturing processes is connected to other fundamental 
changes—above all, a profound transformation of human lives, not necessarily 
for the worse. In the eyes of my research partners, machines changed the 
existing natural order—more specifically, they spoiled it. For the past two 
centuries, according to my collocutors, all things food have only been going 
downhill, as have other matters in general, all in the shadow of the mainstream 
agro-industrial food system. The alternative movements, among which I 
also classify the Istrian food initiative, have supposedly been addressing a 
number of recent or less recent interconnected processes, which the English 
anthropologist Jeff Pratt draws attention to: the farming revolution, the 
development of the global foodstuffs market, transnational corporations in the 
food chain, supermarket chains, and consumption changes (Pratt 2007: 286).

These processes consequently generated worries about the environment: 
the fate of small farmers, the direction of global trade relations, the rise of 
corporate power throughout food chains, and food quality (Pratt 2007:287). 
Social movements such as Istrians fighting for measures related to these 
changes promote an alternative food system in contrast to the mainstream 
one. The polarized view of the alternative movements can be described in 
a nutshell as the opposition between good and bad, or right and wrong. 
In the romantic landscape of food, the terms traditional, eternal, slow, 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

authentic, and original usually overlap with organic, local, and even 
ecological. Pratt states that these are not the same, and analyzes how these 
discourses intersect in a mix contrasting with the global agro-industrial 
food complex (Pratt 2007, also Debevec and Tivadar 2006, Rogelja 2006).

While there are about a dozen positive adjectives that my research partners 
associate with Istrian food, I have chosen to examine those that are more 
evocative and that stress various aspects ascribed to Istrian food. These 
are key to understanding what Istrian food is in the eyes of the experts. 
When put together, these adjectives are not cohesive, but do represent a 
coherent entity at first glance. The qualities reflected in these terms are 
an important and revealing part of the modern Istrian food movement, 
which on the one hand represents merely one of the many alternative 
answers to global changes, yet is, on the other hand, due to the region’s 
particular historical frame, also a unique one. Until 1991 when Slovenia 
split from Yugoslavia, the Istrian peninsula has for centuries been a part of 
the same, although rapidly changing, state formations (Darovec 2009).5

 

Authentic

Authenticity (in the local languages, autenticità, avtentičnost, autentičnost) is 
the most encompassing term, and it is commonly adopted as a code word for 
the blend of Istrian food. The authentic stands against the mainstream, which 
one of my willful collocutors aimed to prove by entering her bread in a Slovenia-
wide food fair. She was awarded the maximum points in all possible categories 
except for form. She knew which form was required of the competitors, but 
nonetheless made a biga—an “authentic” Istrian loaf—just to prove her point.6 

Notions of authenticity, like those I have just outlined, are extremely 
widespread. They are often fused with notions of the genuine, real, or true, 
establishing themselves against the inauthentic and fake (Bendix 1997, 
Fillitz and Saris 2012). The meaning of authenticity shifts from one context 
to another, but implies something true, original, good, and a plethora of 
other affirmative expressions. It seems to be a more powerful and broader 
expression than, say, traditional or ecological, and it is generally preferred 
over these latter two adjectives, which are stricter in their meanings.



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Istrian food experts find the source of food authenticity in two areas: natural 
and cultural.7 My interlocutors seek to situate Istrian authentic food in the 
sphere of the natural, and they speak about the unique flora and fauna 
of Istria as the reason for this. Istria is referred to as the northernmost 
part of the Mediterranean where olive trees grow,8 with the implication 
that Istria has an exclusive location, supposedly the reason for the above-
average quality of the locally produced oil (Ogrin 2004). Experts are proud 
of other products too, such as the truffle, portrayed as the king of cuisine, 
and wild asparagus, which rank high on the imagined scale of quality 
foodstuffs. In comparison with more central European regions near Istria, 
Istria’s typically Mediterranean goods, such as olive oil, wine, or tomato, 
are considered distinctive because of their production in Croatia’s and 
Slovenia’s littoral zones, where the continental past and present intersect 
with the Mediterranean (e.g. Rihtman Avguštin 2001, Godina Golija 2006).

Fulvio Tomizza, an esulo9 and a renowned writer who recounted stories 
predominantly about his native Istria, used to claim that Istria, despite its 
smallness, is a microcosm where “everything” can be found, at least according 
to his aficionados among the culinary experts. The implication is that Istria 
offers an excellently balanced range of foodstuffs. While Istrian products are 
supposed to be rare, however, they are also considered the best of their kind. 
The food experts boil the quality of foodstuffs down to geography and climate, 
which are responsible for the best truffles, wine, olive oil, asparagus, fish, and 
other foods. One of the many food festivals, for example, promotes the delicious 
pilchards caught in the delta of the Mirna River, where saltwater and freshwater 
meet, supposedly resulting in the superior quality of the fish. The seemingly 
scientific explanations are of course very useful when seeking to authenticate 
a product. Biological components of the environment thus bestow uniqueness 
and authenticity on a place’s products, prohibiting them from being replicated 
elsewhere. The common criticism of the “fake” Chinese truffles that can be 
heard among the experts is an example of such fear of food pirating (Photo 3).



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

Photo 3.  Grilled ricotta with truffles served author by interviewee Sandi 
Tripar, owner of a truffle restaurant. Belvedur, 29 May 2015. Photo: Daša Ličen.

One of my research partners, a chef who owns his own catering business and 
presents Istrian cuisine internationally,10 explained to me how it is precisely 
nature that supplies authenticity and singularity to Istria’s homemade products:

There are ideas that are born spontaneously; for instance, pears 
with rosemary. I have three old [pear] trees, my grandfather 
already had them, and under them we planted a few decorative 
rosemary bushes, and when I passed by—and these pears 
were ripe, they were falling on the rosemary bushes—I found 
the smell incredibly nice, and said, wait a minute, why not try 
it, and I tried one batch, and it was really good . . . . I wanted 
to do more and tried with other pears . . . . No, that wasn’t it. 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

You know, there needs to be exactly that variety, apparently 
it was also ripe to perfection, as well as the rosemary, and 
so the combination was a really fortunate one because 
when I tried it with other pears it wasn’t right anymore.

Authenticity, according to conventional beliefs, also emerges out of 
Istria’s culture. Although Istria’s goods are valuable, they are apparently 
not plentiful. The locals talk of cucina povera “poor cuisine,” not in the 
sense of nutritional value, but in the limited variety and availability of 
foodstuffs. Because of the immense creativity of local women, however, 
housewives were able to build up a rich tradition despite the limited 
repertoire and quantities of foodstuffs. They also needed to cook depending 
on the season (štajon), yet another link to nature, according to my Istrian 
culinary experts. People should eat what Istrian soil provides but, even 
more, when it provides it. Such food is then rich in taste, environmentally 
friendly, and healthy, at least according to my research partners.

All this “authenticity” could be summarized by the concept of terroir, which 
has changed, or rather expanded, in the past few decades. At first it meant 
only the environmental and geographical characteristics that give individual 
foodstuffs their taste, but now it also includes the human factors of the area 
and, most recently, the aura of genuineness and authenticity that only a specific 
terroir can provide (Demossier 2011). Terroir, the taste of a place, links socio-
cultural heritage claims with special natural features in producing goods with 
a special aura. Istrian cuisine is then one of the special places where culture, 
the artisanal cultivation, merges with nature. As much as terroir promotes a 
local landscape in a pan, it is really oriented outside of the local in its visibility 
at festivals that attract visitors from various places and “export” “authenticated” 
local cultural resources to a broader national and international audience.

Traditional

While the Istrian culinary experts do not see much difference between 
traditional and authenticity, scholars do. The notion of traditional primarily 
within the analyzed discourses aims at providing a dish or a foodstuff with 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

a timeless lineage. Ethnologists used to, and some still do, enjoy making 
inventories of traditions of a past that is disappearing or has already 
vanished (Fikfak 2008:38).11 Many have seen the “traditional” past as static, 
rarely mentioning that traditional practices did not exist as such from the 
beginning of time. Many have, however, surpassed the Herderian spirit and 
deconstructed such historicist “returns to Eden,” chiefly through denoting 
everything as folklorism—which again some scholars have abandoned 
because there is no clear line between folklore and folklorism. Nor is there 
a clear line between kitsch and tastefulness.12 “Only the sensibility and 
experience of those who do serious work on the subject can define the limits 
of history and romance properly, even if precariously” (Montanari 2006:67). 
My goal in this section is not simply to deconstruct invented traditions 
(Hobsbawm 2006)—because, after all, an invented tradition is still a 
tradition—but to show their role as relevant for the Istrian food discourses.

According to Gérard Lenclud, tradition is mainly defined as having one 
or all of the following features: being a vestige from the past, referring to 
non-written customs, and defining cultural facts as important (not just any 
cultural facts; Lenclud 1987:9). Henry Glassie (1995) would add that tradition 
is a temporal concern, always intertwined with the past, but open to endless 
revision. Continuity and not stasis is in tradition’s character. In the case of 
Istrian food experts, the regional past is seen as static and flawlessly perfect, 
and Istrian food is too. My research partners believe that people in former 
times lived carefree because their only worry was “whether or not their cow 
was pregnant.” Besides that, their food was homegrown and healthy, unlike 
today’s “artificial” food, when “you do not even know what they put inside.” 
In my interlocutors’ opinions, all the significant Istrian foodstuffs and dishes 
have always been present and ought to remain a part of this region.

Although it is somehow easy to believe wine production is an ancient activity 
in Istria, it is harder to claim this for truffle hunting, but let me give you an 
idea how the experts “traditionalize” truffles. Many of my field experts had 
no trouble declaring truffles to be traditionally Istrian. The chef who, at the 
moment, probably prepares more truffles than any other in Istria told me:

They were not made up yesterday. There exist centuries-old 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

records of people going out and hunting truffles with dogs. 
People were hungry and tried truffles; they had no taste when 
cold, so they warmed them and the aroma developed. 

In fact, until recently, these nowadays expensive delicacies were considered 
to be merely “stinking potatoes” that pigs would eat. In Istria, truffles started 
being collected only in the late 1920s, but to be sold to Italians (Ledinek Lozej 
and Rogelja 2000:93). They were invented as traditional much later, in the 
1990s, when they became a symbol of Istrian gastronomic identity (Kocković 
2014:53). An old Arab proverb says that a man is more similar to his time 
than to his father’s time, which in a nutshell explains the story about truffles’ 
timeless history. Italians have likewise naturalized the tomato and have 
largely forgotten its origins in the Americas. Similarly, Istrians, and most of 
Europe, have forgotten corn or polenta’s roots in the Americas. By moving an 
item or a dish from the world of authenticity to the world of multiple copying, 
the “original” recipes, ingredients, and tools have been “relocated, renamed 
and introduced to a new system of representations” (Billiard 2006:123).

Two food items that reveal experts’ perspectives on tradition appeared in 
every single interview I carried out; the first one was polenta, which used 
to be a substitute for bread in less affluent Istrian households.13 For my 
research partners, polenta, boiled cornmeal, is a link to everything from 
the recent past, whereas by contrast, the second food item, rolled kebabs 
known as čevapčiči, “the intruders,” are the symbol of all that is alien, new, 
and foreign. Grilled čevapčiči come from the Balkans and are infecting 
the formerly “pure” Istrian cuisine, not only symbolically but also with 
their odor, which my interviewees complained about.14 Čevapčiči became 
rooted in Istria during the Yugoslav era, but are now more connected to 
the Other—namely, to Bosnians living in the Istrian peninsula, and to 
all undesired immigrants from elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia.15 

Interestingly enough, čevapčiči originate from Ottoman cuisine and can be 
considered a Mediterranean dish. Mirjana Randić (2006:38) says Turkish 
or Balkan cuisines are typically not regarded as Mediterranean, however, 
but as rather different entities (Randić 2006:38): What is considered 
part of Greek traditional cuisine and what is considered Turkish chiefly 
differs in only a letter or two of the name, revealing that tradition is not 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

only about food itself, but also about the wider social context. Similarly 
to čevapčiči, ethnic food establishments in Sardinia are seen to intrude 
into the authentic scene. According to Carole Counihan’s 2014 study, 
inhabitants explained “foreign” ethnic food establishments’ lack of 
rootedness in the land for the Sardinian old towns’ restrictions on them.

Old and traditional are superlative, from the viewpoint of the culinary 
experts, but what I noticed during my fieldwork is that the oldest and most 
original are often mixed with the modern—yet not just any modern. In Istria, 
čevapčiči are new in comparison to polenta, but not fresh enough to be a 
real modern element that can fashionably complement the traditional. One 
of the festivals I studied promotes itself with this telling quote, “incredibly 
healthy, nutritious, tasty, and affordable, pilchards have fed generations of 
Mediterranean families, and now they return to the table in a number of 
imaginative combinations.” In Istria, at least a dozen haute cuisine restaurants 
consider themselves principally Istrian; they fit the idea of traditional perfectly, 
but add a pinch of innovation to their menus. A chef de cuisine whom I 
talked to is, for instance, renowned for his “molecular” minestrone (also 
known locally as mineštra or maneštra), which consists of different, as he 
put it, “rounded spheres,” which the customer then mixes on his or her own. 
“Istrian sushi” is what another prestigious restaurant serves its customers; in 
the same artistic manner, several other Istrian chefs concoct unusual dishes 
that journalists then praise to the wider public. Following novel gastronomic 
trends is generally part of a more urban Istrian cuisine, yet is not rejected 
by the wider expert community I conducted interviews with. Not all of the 
experts implement new vogues though, and so there is a boundary between 
the more peasant rural cuisine (known as konoba) and “haute traditional 
cuisine” (Sammells 2014:142), but the groups do not challenge each other.

Clare Sammells came up with the phrase haute traditional cuisines as bridging 
the gap between geographic localism and globalizing cosmopolitanism. They 
move between two extremes, claiming legitimacy both as heritage and as global 
elite commodities (Sammells 2014:142–143). The Slovenian ethnologist Maja 
Godina Golija also talks of traditional food being in balance with innovation, 
but does not give it a special name (2012:100). Polenta was, for instance, 
one of the foodstuffs Istrian experts selected from the past, but since it has 
also become popular around the globe at about the same time, it is therefore 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

considered very traditional (of course, only when cooked from scratch) and is 
simultaneously hip, appealing to the tastes of cosmopolitan “foodies.” Regina 
Bendix (1997) talks more generally about this paradox: the combination of 
the fossilized and dynamic. The modern elements should not be mistaken for 
suggesting that cooking is a constantly evolving practice, because they are 
thought of as just entering and leaving the picture without changing it, in the 
experts’ opinions. The combination of modernity and traditional has a lot to do 
with the fetishization of authenticity, and the market itself, to which I turn later.

The present shapes the past and irrefutably claims sets of goods and 
practices as traditional, which Di Giovine and Brulotte (2014) call “goods 
heritage.” Indeed an increasing number of institutions, including the 
European Union and UNESCO,16 are creating terroir designations for various 
regions, countries, or even wider units. The earliest stem from the Italian 
wine industry—DOC, or denominazione di origine controllata (controlled 
designation of origin)—and require that specific wines be produced in a 
specific well-defined region, according to traditional knowhow. While these 
designations serve openly to honor particular foods and food complexes, 
they also add value to them, especially for export and marketing, while 
offering protection from copycat products. These larger geographical 
marketing trends are for now rather absent in the Mediterranean diet’s 
micro-region of the Istrian peninsula, but more local, less formally applied 
designations of origin aim to protect Istrian foods’ reputation as traditional.

Healthy

What is healthy and what is not can obviously not be clearly separated, yet the 
idea among the Istrian culinary experts is that healthy food has to be prepared 
from scratch, and it is absolutely not prepackaged, unless one prepared it oneself 
beforehand. This tenet that quality comes from homemade products goes hand 
in hand with the aim to construct a morally right local economy separated from 
the capitalist system (Pratt 2007:288). Healthy food must also contain as few 
foodstuffs from outside the region as possible, partly because the Mediterranean 
context lends excellent support to the idea that home-made foods using 
local Istrian foodstuffs are both healthy and environmentally sound.



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

Part of the reasoning here is that the Istrian diet is seen to represent a version 
of “the Mediterranean diet”—a relatively new metaphorical abstraction (Baskar 
and Krese 1993)— which is proclaimed to be the healthiest in the world due 
to the ancient wisdom of the region’s inhabitants.17 According to my culinary 
experts, Istrian food is claimed to be the healthiest of all. Good nutritional 
and longevity benefits bestowed by olive oil, fresh fruits and vegetables, 
seafood, wine, and certain grains (Di Giovine and Brulotte 2014:13) have 
been correlated with a lower incidence of cardiovascular diseases. Ancel B. 
Keys especially promoted this idea, encouraging Americans, in his case, to 
adopt more rational dietary habits (Keys and Keys 1959). As the diet gained 
widespread international recognition in the 1960s and 1970s, the promotion 
of olive oil in particular increased its production (Billiard 2006:118).

In Istrian cuisine, olive oil, the cornerstone of the Mediterranean diet, 
is a pivotal ingredient; it is absolutely always present, chefs pour it over 
everything, make it available on every table, and sell it. Defenders of 
Istrian food, trapped in their desire to convert a fatty cuisine into a healthy 
dietary and trendy Mediterranean one, have accordingly ignored parts 
of their culinary heritage, such as use of lard, which is however still very 
much alive “among simple people.” This amiable placement of Istrian 
cuisine within the Mediterranean nutritional model was definitely one of 
the factors contributing to the blossoming of Istrian culinary experts.

Besides olive oil, also truffles are ordinarily accentuated as good for health. 
Istrian connoisseurs of truffles are convinced that truffles are a good source 
of protein, work as an aphrodisiac and are in general very salubrious. One of 
the “truffle kings” said of his catering team: “They never even sneeze! I am 
sure it is because of the truffle consumption; I suppose it affects the immune 
system. This would be worth checking and I hope some scientists will study 
it.” To give the healthiness of Istrian food more scientific backing at the local 
level, food experts organizing festivals regularly invite nutritionists or even 
doctors to lecture on a certain foodstuff, or on Istrian cuisine in general.

Even though the experts see Istrian cuisine as a particular fragment of the 
Mediterranean diet, they typically do not link it to its healthiness, but rather 
to tradition. Since retirement, one of the cooks I interviewed has begun to 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

promote Istrian food as healthy, lecturing on the subject. She told how once, 
when readying a lecture for schoolchildren, she woke up very early to fry fritters 
(known in Istria as fritule 18) because she wanted the children to have a good 
snack and not “industrially” prepared waffles. One does not need great insight 
to see that the difference in health benefits between the two is not tremendous. 
But according to her, whether or not a dish was “homemade” (traditional) 
made a substantial difference and could replace the role of a doctor. Another 
research partner confirmed this idea in a story about crostata he recently ate:

Deep frozen, thawed, an Italian trick, there are only poisons 
inside, especially for us who are a bit older, it is cholesterol, 
isn’t it? When you make a crostata at home it is completely 
different. Okay, it has sugar and is a little bit fattening, but 
besides that, in my opinion it is not so harmful. . . . Then I found 
out it was microwaved, some Italian Tre Marie, mamma mia, 
I saw a truck delivering them, blah, get this away from me.

So Istrian cuisine is claimed to be healthy not only because of its Mediterranean 
basis but also because of its home, local and ecological production, which is 
traditional, and, last but not least, authentic. One again sees that each of the 
adjectives describing Istrian food can immediately be linked to all the others.

Ecological and Organic

How many kilometers did that avocado travel before it ended up on the 
shelf of the grocery store? Were the hens allowed to roam around freely 
before they laid their eggs? Trendy questions of this kind are relevant for 
Istrian food discourses and the typically ecological and organic answers to 
them contain moral values, as do notions of what makes “healthy” foods.

The supposedly most poisonous foods are those produced or transported 
by huge companies because “you never know what’s inside.” Istrian 
food stands for exactly the opposite of the “toxic global.” Ecological 
and organic are innate to Istrian food, at least according to my 
interlocutors. When I asked the culinary experts about their notions of 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

ecological and/or organic, they were not only supportive of them, but 
found them to be integrated in their practices of Istrian cuisine. 

Most of my research partners have a farm, or at least a garden, where 
“everything is organic.” Yet when asked about certifications, they noted 
how extremely complicated it is to obtain one, and how time-consuming 
it is to endure certifier visits that may be as often as once per week. 
Some claimed they do not need the certification, and another mentioned 
his fear of obtaining it because his neighbor surely uses pesticides and 
other chemicals that could be determined to infect his crop. Yet another 
questioned the reliability of certification because sometimes rain carries 
air-borne poisons that contaminate the soil. Violations of certification 
also can result in stiff penalties from ecological or organic agricultural 
supervisors, so the farmers’ apprehensions are not completely out of place.

In the experts’ eyes, almost everything in Istria that grows, swims, or 
grazes, even if habitually not certified, may be considered biological, 
ecological, or organic in some respects. They also find wild organisms 
that prosper without human intervention, such as asparagus and 
truffles, the most purely “natural.” By extension, eating natural, 
ecological, green, and organic Istrian food symbolizes cooling down the 
“overheated” (Eriksen 2016) planet that the mainstream agro-industrial 
food system produces, although these actions in point of fact do not 
ameliorate the challenging environmental issues we all are facing. 

 

The Alternative Market

It is presumed among the Istrian food experts that authentic food is a part of 
an alternative market, which stands against global foodways that homogenize 
not only food itself, but the experience of consuming, as well as the imaginaries 
of the alimentary culture that relates to consumption (Di Giovine and Brulotte 
2014, Wilk 2006, Pratt 2007). Even though Istrians have adopted what I 
exaggeratedly call a Blut und Boden ideology when it comes to food, their 
political aspirations are presented as rather leftist. When the Slow Food 
movement was founded in Bra in 1986, it was similarly politically oriented to 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

the left. Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food, originally established it to 
prevent a new McDonald’s restaurant from opening in Rome and, most of all, 
more broadly attempted to reconnect producers with consumers. One of the 
parallels between Slow Food and Istrian food activism is promoting social 
and economic justice through the food system, even though Slow Food has 
been drifting increasingly to the right since then (Paxson 2005). However, 
while the left-wing aspirations of Istrian experts sometimes appear a bit 
phony, still their general idea is to increase local production, provide fair pay 
to Istrians, and to turn their backs on Starbucks cafés around the planet.

Experts typically told me that their culinary endeavors are not connected to 
money, but are almost charitable acts. The organizer of an artichoke festival 
kept telling me how much hard work coordination of a festival demands. He 
does not get paid for any of his activity; what he does is a result of his own good 
will because he believes in what he does in the dissemination of local, natural, 
and high-quality products. The organizer of the artichoke festival is not acting 
merely as the head of the village tourist association, but in fact also as the 
biggest local retailer of artichokes, and he has been the head of the festival from 
its very beginning. A quick internet search, for example, revealed that up to 
30% of his yearly harvest of artichokes is sold at this particular festival, which 
makes his statement about the meaninglessness of money very questionable.

The Slovene “truffle king”—as the media have dubbed him, and which he does 
not hesitate to make use of himself—operates similarly. In his and other experts’ 
opinions, the poisonous food brought from far away should be replaced with 
the local seasonal products. It would hinder the huge companies from abroad 
that interfere with traditional routines and would decrease inequality. The 
truffle expert is even a member of a quite radical, but not very successful, local 
left-wing political party, and within it he fights for the revitalization of the 
countryside, but simultaneously promotes his restaurant at shopping malls, 
where he sets up a stall, cooks truffle dishes, and sells the expensive products 
that he and his parents make at home. The “truffle king” seems to be trying 
to rule two kingdoms, the authentic as well as the inauthentic one, and there 
seem to be more such emperors. Pratt (2007), however, denies that there are 
strong boundaries between the mainstream and the alternative market; they 
are in fact quite porous, which my conclusion explores in greater detail.



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

Conclusion

The message of this article concerns the idea of “authentic” Istrian food, 
which, in the eyes of my research partners, cannot be distinguished 
from the “traditional,” “ecological,” “organic,” “healthy,” or “alternative 
market.” My goal was to illuminate a discourse, which chiefly recognizes 
Istrian food as a mixture of different positive qualities and simply 
good. It claims to establish Istrian cuisine against the mainstream 
agro-industrial market and thus as ultimately alternative. 

Let me summarize the aforementioned qualities that are commonly and 
interchangeably ascribed to Istrian food. According to the experts, Istrian 
regional food gets its “authenticity” from local nature, on the one hand, and 
Istrian culture, on the other. They portray Istrian dishes as thus embodying 
both, giving a “true taste of Istria itself.” “Tradition,” another quality that 
brands Istrian cuisine, implies that Istrian food identity was inscribed in the 
heavens, and is for that reason eternal and fixed. What gives this regional 
cuisine its “healthiness” is commonly precisely tradition, as stated by the 
interviewed experts, but even more often “healthiness” is considered to 
be due to Istria’s representation of the Mediterranean diet. Istrian food is 
in addition also supposed to be “ecological” and “organic”—which experts 
plainly explain as resulting from local production—because whatever 
grows on Istrian soil or in its waters sprouted in an ecological and organic 
environment, unlike most of the other foodstuffs that are supposedly 
produced artificially—far away and in factories. Last, but not least, I touched 
upon the common notion that Istrian food is a part of an “alternative 
economy” operating in the alternative market, in contrast to the mainstream 
one that is frequently characterized by agro-industrial food production 
and distribution, and global capitalist companies such as McDonald’s.

These diverse qualities reinforce one another and are used interchangeably even 
if they do not mean the same thing. Experts’ discourses should therefore be 
taken with a grain of salt because “the totalizing character of these discourses 
hides the fact that the different qualities evoked for alternative foods do not in 
fact entail each other, and may pull in different directions” (Pratt 2007:285). 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

The analyzed experts mesh these qualities together and through them promote 
an important opposition: they perceive food as being either mainstream, thus 
industrial, global, and bad, or alternative, in their case Istrian, thus healthy, 
traditional, ecological, authentic, and more. A universe where all of the negative 
qualities reside stands against one where all the positive can be found.

The experts thus neglect many essential contrasts between the above-
mentioned qualities and see them as contrasting with the global or mainstream 
food system. Yet these experts are, according to Pratt’s words, not the only 
ones who share this common rhetorical dialectic between the alternative 
and the mainstream agro-food markets in contemporary times (Pratt 2007). 
On the other hand, perhaps we should admire these experts for promoting 
“authentic” Istrian cuisine. Although lacking some meticulousness, they, 
on the bright side, correctly detect many problematic symptoms of global 
food trends and are actively seeking to address them in a variety of ways. 
They note, for example, that recommendations to eat autochthonous fish 
regularly combined with frequent offerings to tourists, in fact contribute to 
worsening the already high level of overfishing present in the Adriatic Sea.

How people eat, where they eat, whom they eat with, and when they eat varies 
uniquely from place to place, but I contend that regions are the focal unities 
of a certain food coherence, like the one that my experts seek to articulate 
and trace to Istria’s historical and cultural past. Cuisine is a rather larger 
culinary structure that makes meals make sense, which seems much more 
easily ascribed to Istria than to a greater nation-state entity like Slovenia or 
for that matter any other. I did not set out to determine whether or not there 
is a culinary tradition that joins together the whole Istrian peninsula, and in 
this manner answer if there really is something called Istrian cuisine. Rather, 
I studied the people who are positive such cuisine exists and continues to 
endure, although threatened. Whilst the geographical and historical unity of 
the region inspires confidence that there used to be such a thing as Istrian 
cuisine, my aim was to ascertain to what extent it exists as such nowadays and 
how. Both the perceived reality and continuity of this cuisine could be due, 
to a great extent, to the influence of the culinary experts I researched. They 
are sure Istrian cuisine was and remains homogeneous, they believe in the 
gastronomic unity of the region and, in a consistent folk rhetoric, they spread 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

almost identical although inconsistent ideas on what Istrian food 
is or is not. They, at the end of the day, are the ones making the 
modern discussion of the existence of Istrian food even possible.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the culinary experts for allowing me to 
enter their daily lives and learn about their passionate 
advocacy for Istrian foods. I also thank Janet C. 
Gilmore for her editorial help with this essay. 

Notes

(1) On this occasion, I prepared polenta—a dish of boiled 
cornmeal, usually consumed hot as a porridge. It has for 
centuries been a staple food of the regions now representing the 
north of Italy, but the nearby Mediterranean regions such as 
Istria know it too. Polenta can nowadays be found also in central 
Slovenia, but mainly due to the fact it entered a new golden age 
and is now perceived as one of the more glamorous dishes.

(2) More on them and their taste can be found in 
my article, “The Fine and the Tasteless. Istrian 
Culinary Experts and Taste ” (2015).

(3) For the sake of allowing readers to reflect more readily on 
some data that were collected through fieldwork, I reproduce 
testimony without constantly using quotes and citations. But 
these may be found in my field materials and master’s thesis.

(4) In his article “Food Values” (2007, 286-287) the 
anthropologist Jeff Pratt sheds light on a number of processes 
that brought along the agro-industrial food system as we 
know it. More on that in the continuation of this paper.



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

(5) In the late 18th century, when the Venetian Republic 
fell, Istria became a part of the Habsburg Monarchy. After 
its occupation by Napoleon in the early 19th century, it 
returned to Habsburg rule until World War I. Between the 
two world wars, it belonged to Italy; after World War II, to 
Yugoslavia; and then in the early 1990s, it was split between 
the newly established republics of Slovenia and Croatia.

(6) Biga has different meanings, but in this case 
stands for a kind of loaf that looks like a set of buns 
holding together very tightly. One can then easily 
pull the buns apart and avoid cutting the bread.

(7) There are clear parallels between nature and geography 
and between culture and history, but I as an anthropologist 
prefer to avoid the nature-culture division, unless in this 
case when I stick to the terms my collocutors like to use.

(8) Although Istria is very proud of its olive oil, there are in fact 
parts of Istria where there is no olive oil production, because olive 
trees actually do not grow above about 250 meters in elevation.

(9) Thousands of mostly Italian individuals known as esuli left 
Istria after World War II, when these areas became a part of 
Yugoslavia, and settled in Italy. Tomizza was among them. 

(10) He performed twice at Milan’s 2015 Expo, 
where he represented Istrian cuisine.

(11) Slovene ethnology did not bother much about food until 
Rajko Ložar’s extensive study on food in1944, in which he 
warned ethnologists against simply collecting and publishing 
recipes. The real upswing in food studies appeared in the 
mid-1990s, and since then a growing number of articles and 
exhibitions have been devoted to the topic. Credit especially 
goes to Maja Godina Golija, but food is still insufficiently 
researched, which she also states (Godina Golija 2012:94). 



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag.. © American Folklore Society 2017

(12) Some academic attempts to protect traditional festivals 
from kitsch are surprisingly very recent. Katja Hrobat Virloget 
offers guidelines on how festivals (called sagre or šagre in Istria) 
should be conducted today (Hrobat Virloget 2012). At times, her 
suggestions seem a bit like battling windmills because her advice, 
although sensible, will probably not change the existing tradition. 

(13) In the past, polenta was a “dish for the indisposed;” that is, 
it was simple, economical, and had no added spices, and so it 
was the prototype for a lower-class diet (Montanari 2006:39). 
Ledinek Lozej also mentions polenta as a bread substitute 
in the Vipava Valley in the Slovenian Littoral (2015:105).

(14) Most culinary experts also complain about non-local music 
that is played at the festivals; however, local alternatives are few.

(15) Migrants from various other parts of the 
former Yugoslavia are, at least in Slovenian Istria, 
intriguingly simply referred to as “Bosnians.”

(16) Since 2010, for instance, the Mediterranean diet has been 
part of UNESCO’s List of Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

(17) Although some argue that its healthiness in fact 
results from poverty (Baskar and Krese 1993).

(18) Fritters are a good case of showing how it is in food’s 
character to change and ignore the regional or national borders. 
For instance, the Dalmatian region considers fritters to be 
theirs, and Slovenia too, but under another name: miške.



Ličen, Daša. 2016. “The “Authentic” Blend: Experts Weigh in on Istrian 
Food.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

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