Catalan cuisine enters US universities

Catalan cuisine, with pa amb tomàquet as its ambassador, is entering US cookery schools through the Catalan Food project, the initiative of Prodeca and the Government of Catalonia to position Catalan food and companies and promote them commercially in strategic markets such as the United States.

On Thursday 18 October there was a new masterclass led by Catalan chef Alba Sunyer, who has lived in the United States for 15 years, at the Florida International University Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management in Miami. The session “Taste of Catalonia” was aimed at some fifty US food professionals as well as the school's own students, future advocates of Catalan cuisine.

With 1,200 undergraduate and postgraduate students from across the United States, Florida International University's Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management is regarded as the country's sixth-best hospitality school. 

Alba Sunyer gave the talk "The landscape in a pot", taking as a reference Josep Pla's phrase defining Catalan cooking ("Cooking is the landscape in the pot"), an overview of our culinary heritage, followed by an interactive workshop exploring the art of pa amb tomàquet where participants could learn the technique and its various uses, plus innovations for creating their own versions of the most genuine dish of Catalan cuisine.

This is the second Catalan Food Academy session, , following the masterclass held in February at Schoolcraft College in Livonia (Michigan), also led by chef Alba Sunyer. The next Catalan Food Academy sessions in the United States will be held at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton (Wisconsin) and Bunker Hill Community College in Boston (Massachusetts). 

These masterclasses offer an unrivalled opportunity for cooking professionals to engage directly with the traditions and techniques that define Catalan cooking. They provide both theoretical knowledge and practical skills through the interactive workshops.