Food fights: The trouble with national dishes

Countries can be downright territorial about their cuisines, and that is because the comforts of home are key to defining homelands

Food’s also been used to establish broader identities like how we have come to associate pizza and pasta with Italy. PHOTO: UNSPLASH
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There will be a lot of talk about the signature dishes and inimitable styles of the top spots as this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants is announced on Tuesday.

Central in Lima creates its singular cuisine from Peru’s most astonishing produce – from Amazonian piranha to Andean potatoes to globular algae plucked from forest rivulets. Alchemist in Copenhagen and Mugaritz in San Sebastian continue to push the radical rethinking of dining that El Bulli began on Spain’s Costa Brava.

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