It’s a real magnet for fans of slow food: natural ingredients, original recipes, meetings with culinary masters… Terra Madre is here!

Almost 150 exhibitors, over 30 demonstrations, dinners with Poland’s finest chefs, tastings for adults and attractions for kids, debates and discussions: the Terra Madre Slow Food Festival Central Europe is the perfect opportunity to pay homage to Mother Earth and learn the best ways to make the most of her offerings. It’s an essence of the slow food movement formed three decades ago in Italy in response to the invasion of fast food restaurants, dwindling biodiversity and fading culinary traditions.

Visitors to the fair at the ICE Kraków Congress Centre (12-13 November) will be able to pick up organic produce and ingredients which are usually difficult to source, and learn the secrets of their preparation. This year’s festival focuses on the concept of “slow meat”, rejecting poor-quality meat produced on an industrial scale. Let’s eat less meat, but let it actually taste of something! We’re already seeing results: promotion of slow food concepts means that goose is making a return to Polish tables after many years of obscurity. Kraków is visited by Olga Rendek from Hungary, breeder of the country’s famous mangalica pigs. The fair welcomes producers from many countries across Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Italy. “We want the Terra Madre Slow Food Festival to be a celebration of ‘Mother Earth’ and a presentation of good, pure and fair produce. The event focuses on cereals, legumes, vegetarian and vegan cuisine and Central European cheeses,” says Dr. Jacek Szklarek, president of Slow Food Poland and originator of the festival. We will also sample Moravian and Hungarian wines and craft beers from Slovakia. This section of the festival culminates with the Young Wine Celebration (11 November, Stara Zajezdnia), co-organised by Kraków’s Srebrna Góra Vineyard.

Terra Madre hosts outstanding Polish chefs from restaurants recommended by Slow Food Poland, presenting their craft at the city’s finest culinary locations. “Lamb, game, foraged foods, cereals, goose, freshwater fish and other bounty mean Poland’s culinary scene can dazzle on a European or even global scale. Terra Madre in Kraków is the perfect opportunity to sample authentic cuisine from different regions in Poland,” stresses Krzysztof Żurek, chef at Kraków’s Trzy Rybki restaurant.

And the festival doesn’t forget kids: after all, our sense of taste is shaped from our earliest years, and cooking and eating together is a great way of spending time with friends and family. This time, kids will be able to develop their creativity at a specially adapted workshop and learn to make cheese under the watchful eye of Wawrzyniec Maziejuk from the Figa Cheese Factory.

“Kraków has always been a melting pot of many cultures and ethnic cuisines, such as Jewish, Galician, Highlander, Hungarian and Old Polish. The Terra Madre Slow Food Festival is a perfect continuation of this tradition and a great opportunity to place Kraków on the culinary map of Central Europe,” says Izabela Helbin, director of the Krakow Festival Office.

Entry to the fair is 5 zlotys and free for kids under 12 years old. You can also reserve your place for festival dinners, demonstrations and workshops on the website. (Grzegorz Słącz, "Karnet" magazine)