From the dark margins to the spotlight: The evolution of gastronomy and food studies in Ireland

This chapter tracks the evolution of gastronomy and food studies in Ireland. It charts the development of gastronomy as a cultural field, originally in France, to its emergence as an academic discipline with a particular Irish inflection. The chapter discusses the role of restaurant guides as tools of consecration in haute cuisine, before providing a brief history of culinary education in Ireland. The chapter proposes that a new liberal/vocational model of culinary education (the BA (hons) Culinary Arts), which commenced in 1999, has helped transform the gastronomic landscape in Ireland. It argues that for many years, food was seen as too quotidian and belonging to the domestic sphere, and therefore to women, which excluded it from any serious study or consideration in academia. However, commencing with the Annales School, historians and later sociologists, anthropologists and scholars from other disciplines began to pay attention to the food and drink and its role in society. From 2009, Irish chefs have been awarded Master's and Doctoral degrees on various aspect of food-related topics. With the growing success of the Masters in Gastronomy and Food Studies, the fifth biennial Dublin Gastronomy Symposium (DGS), a significant rise in doctoral candidates pursuing food and beverage research, and the launch of the peer-reviewed European Journal of Food, Drink and Society, it is safe to say that gastronomy and food studies in Ireland have left the dark margins and are very much in the spotlight.