Guest editorial

Abstract

Guest editorialFrom place to plate. . .and back again: editorial reflections on the complex entanglements between place and gastronomic development This flavoursome special issue -From Place to Plate: Gastronomy and rural entrepreneurshipfeatures a range of gastronomic experiences, from beer to cheese, as lenses through which to consider a variety of places, food-place interactions and the politics involved in such interrelations. From Wales to Italy, we consider the multi-layered place entanglements with food, drink and experiences, and the producers, consumers and marketers of such gastronomic encounters. Throughout history, local food practices have been major signifiers of how places are; how they might be understood and remembered. Thus identity, food and place have a long relationship which serve as mental cues to remembered reveries about places. Yorkshire pudding, haggis, Neapolitan pizza, chorizo and even frankfurters and hamburgers are all evocative of powerful place imaginaries. Set within the wider backdrop of global-local tensions (Leitch, 2003), rising concerns around sustainability, growth in vegetarianism and veganism (The Economist, 2019) and a blossoming "foodie" culture (Richards, 2015), it is arguably now more important than ever to understand how place and gastronomic development interrelate.The papers in this special issue, therefore, all explore the intimate links between food and place, and they gather around four interrelated themes. The first relates to the immaterial aspects of gastronomy and places; the narratives, traditions, emotions, memories and multisensory experiences intertwined with the trading, growing, harvesting, processing, sharing and consuming of food in place. As Bennett (2010, p. 51) suggests, food is itself "an actant in an agentic assemblage that includes among its members my metabolism, cognition and moral sensibility". Thus, the symbolic resonance of place resides partly in the foods and edible products originating there, in the form of sensual characteristics such as aroma, texture, taste, appearance and associated sounds (Pink, 2015). As Rodriguez finds in her paper in this special issue -Shared landscapes: the impact of residents' visual and sensual perceptions of regional meat production on brand developmentconsumers make inferences about the Herdwick lamb brand through sharing the multi-sensory landscape with the sheep on the fells and in the farmyards. Such sensorial "pre-product" experiences, she contends, can lead to consumer perceptions of a higher quality, better flavoured and more "authentic" meat product.Furthermore, the memories and narratives surrounding food and place help to meld, maintain and effectively market their interconnections. As Palladino reveals in her paper -Rediscovering people, places and traditions: a story of storiesto preserve important gastronomic traditions, development policies should consider the people and stories behind the production of foods. The paper, therefore, offers a reflexive and empathetic methodology for capturing th...