Trdelník: The Czech meals that is not Czech

Lately, this doughy, sugar-coated candy has turn into ubiquitous in Prague. However regardless of being billed as “historically” Czech, the dish was adopted from elsewhere.

In February 2023, newly-minted United States ambassador to the Czech Republic, Bijan Sabet, uploaded a few of his first pictures as ambassador to Instagram. The now-deleted put up included a few photographs of cobblestone streets close to the US Embassy in Prague and a photograph of him holding an ice cream-topped trdelník, a preferred tube-shaped pastry.

The subsequent day, the Czech press jumped on the picture of the trdelník. “The primary mistake of the brand new American ambassador”, learn the headline within the each day newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes. One other Czech newspaper, Lidove Noviny, put it within the spectrum of American political scandals by calling it “TrdelníkGate”. 

So, what was all of the fuss about and the way did a pastry trigger a global political scandal?

For those who be a part of the military of vacationers in Prague’s historic centre, you will discover that each third or fourth store – notably between Previous City Sq. and Charles Bridge – options 15cm (6in) tubes of dough slowly spinning horizontally on a stick over burning charcoal and an indication above it proclaiming “Previous Czech Specialty”. The scent of caramelised sugar and baked dough wafts from these outlets, and at every one, there’s usually a line out the door.

Meet the trdelník. Additionally referred to as “chimney desserts”, maybe as a result of they’re long-ish and tubular, trdelník will get its identify from the stick it slowly spins on because it cooks over coals (trdlo means “stick” in Czech).

After I lived in Prague for 3 years within the Nineteen Nineties, there have been no indicators of the trdelník (pronounced: “ter-del-neek”). However beginning round 2010, I started seeing increasingly outlets and avenue stalls promoting them. Workers have been wearing historic garb and indicators boasted of the pastry’s Czech origins. Seek for “Prague” or “trdelník” on TikTok or Instagram and you will find legions of influencers raving about this “conventional Czech pastry”.

The problem is that the trdelník is not Czech: it is a sugar-coated riddle wrapped in a doughy thriller inside an ice cream-topped enigma of nebulous origins that vacationers seem to like. On the identical time, many locals say travellers to their nation are being duped into considering they’re indulging in one thing inherently Czech. On a current go to to Prague, I made a decision to attempt to peel again the flaky dough of the trdelník with the intention to perceive this culinary conundrum and the way it got here to be a favorite “outdated Czech specialty” among the many vacationer lots.

In keeping with a Romanian newspaper, the first-known point out of the trdelknik is in a mid-Fifteenth-Century manuscript in Heidelberg, Germany. In 1784, it turned up in a cookbook in Transylvania. From there, it appears, the pastry slowly made its method west from Transylvania, anchoring itself all through Hungary the place at this time it is referred to as kürtöskalács, and finally discovering a heat welcome within the Hungarian city of Skalica. The truth that Skalica turned a part of Czechoslovakia would possibly partly clarify how the pastry ended up catching the eye of Czechs entrepreneurs a long time later.

The primary trdelník store within the Czech Republic did not fireplace up its dough-cooking coals till 2004, when Martin Figura opened a bakery within the nation’s japanese Moravia area. On his enterprise’s web site, he claims the pastry comes from Hungary. A yr later, one other baker, Martin Švarc, opened a trdelník stand within the southern Bohemian vacationer city of Česky Krumlov in 2005.

“These folks impressed me, and I copied their enterprise,” he instructed me, referring to the primary few individuals who opened up trdelník bakeries within the nation. In keeping with Švarc, trdelník outlets began opening in Prague a yr or two later. In 2015, somebody bought the good thought to start providing a scoop of ice cream on prime of the dish and town’s new made-for-tourist dessert was full. 

Again in Prague, I met up with Janek Rubeš, a journalist whose YouTube channel, the Trustworthy Information, has 1.4 million subscribers. In his movies, he reveals some native favourites for consuming and consuming in Prague, however he has additionally been very vocal concerning the trdelník, which has made him the face of anti-trdelník sentiment in his hometown.

One of many explanation why the trdelník is so in style with vacationers in Prague might be boiled all the way down to a easy and efficient advertising approach. “My mother used to work for a global restaurant chain, and he or she used to say: should you can scent it and see it from the road, you are possible going to be enticed to strive it,” Rubeš stated.  

Rubeš is not the one Prague resident who’s aggravated by the ubiquity of the trdelník and its false affiliation with Czech culinary tradition. In December 2022, two theatre college students on the  Academy of Performing Arts in Prague made a trdelník-themed mission. Anna Hubená, who’s learning costume design, created a life-size trdelník costume for Danny Takieddin, an performing pupil. Scrawled in giant letters on the bottom of the costume was: “I AM NOT CZECH TRADITION”. The 2 of them hit the streets of central Prague as Hubená filmed Takieddin’s interactions with vacationers. Generally the life-size trdelník with legs could be standing subsequent to trdelník-eating vacationers – most of whom did not get the irony, considering that the plus-sized pastry was really selling a trdelník store. 

“Principally solely native Czechs appreciated it,” stated Hubená. Takieddin added, “Even a homeless man yelled out at us, ‘It is from Romania!'”

Prague would not have a avenue meals custom. Meals right here, historically consumed in pubs, is meaty, stodgy fare that pairs properly with a golden-hued pilsner. I am unable to assist however really feel that trdelník store homeowners are reimagining Czech historical past for their very own monetary profit. The trdelník trade is betting that almost all guests to Prague will not have an intensive data of Czech delicacies. Working example: the American ambassador to the Czech Republic. “I don’t blame him,” stated Rubeš, of the ambassador’s “TrdelníkGate” picture. “For those who stroll by means of the centre of Prague and see so many outlets promoting trdelník, you are going to assume it is a large a part of Czech culinary tradition.” 

It is no coincidence that as tourism numbers have grown within the Czech Republic, so have the variety of trdelník outlets. In 2003, 20 million overseas travellers visited the nation and there have been zero trdelník outlets. By 2019, simply earlier than Covid restrictions, that quantity had practically doubled to 37 million. There aren’t any statistics on the variety of trdelník spots within the nation, however there isn’t any denying that the trdelník trade has shadowed the rise in tourism.

“It is a cautionary story about how authenticity, when paired with processes of city touristification, can turn into a strong software for commodification, deceit and appropriation of third-party meals traditions – on this case Hungary, Romania and Slovakia,” stated Alessandro Gerosa, a professor of sociology on the College of Milan and creator of The Hipster Economic system: Style and Authenticity in Late Trendy Capitalism. “The hostility from native Czechs appears powerless vis-à-vis the pervasiveness of Prague’s rising tourism trade.”

The trdelník might be seen as a approach to appease travellers in search of out one thing that seems to be authentically Czech – a sugar-coated image of how tourism has reworked town into one thing it did not use to be.   

Juliana Fischerová, a baker and meals author, stated, “The trdelník possible made its approach to Prague due to the pageant circuit, comparable to Christmas markets, which was the one time Czechs would see the pastry up till current occasions.” 

Fisherová first began seeing trdelník pastries spinning on sticks in Prague about 20 years in the past and remembered she had seen the pastry in Slovakia lengthy earlier than that. “In Prague, it is half the scale and twice the value,” she stated. “The worst crime, although, is that they use very low-quality elements on the trdelník outlets in Prague. And do not get me began on the standard of the ice cream.”

Fischerová says that it gained’t be lengthy earlier than the pastry enters the canon of Czech delicacies. “Fried cheese is not inherently Czech both, nevertheless it’s been eaten right here so lengthy that it is now a part of our culinary custom. [It’s] on each pub menu everywhere in the nation and, apart from Czech meals historians, nobody questions the authenticity of it.”

“Authenticity” is a phrase that popped up again and again in my analysis on the trdelník. The issue is that “authenticity” is a social assemble, a subjective time period based mostly on a collective notion, so what could seem genuine to at least one individual might really feel inauthentic to a different.

There was an Easter market on Prague’s Previous City Sq. whereas I used to be visiting. And to show Gerosa’s level, I requested a number of trdelník stand workers if the pastry was an genuine Czech product. All of them stated sure. I then approached a stand promoting lángos (fried bread that’s indisputably tied to Hungary).

“Is lángos an genuine Czech avenue meals?” I disingenuously requested the lady on the stall. She paused, appeared me proper within the eye and stated, “Sure. It’s conventional Czech avenue meals. Like Czech pizza.”

Trdelník purveyors in Prague are partaking in what sociologists name “impression administration”. By evoking an imagined historic group of costume-clad Bohemians cooking the trdelník on a stick over coals, they are not solely commodifying the tradition of neighbouring nations, however promoting guests a fabricated model of their very own. 

However does any of this actually matter when hordes of vacationers are actually and figuratively consuming up the trdelnik? Is it actually that scrumptious?

After I completed chatting with Rubeš at a restaurant in central Prague, we walked out onto the road collectively. Rubeš noticed a sanitary employee emptying public garbage bins and requested the employee, “What’s the commonest factor that you simply discover within the trash within the centre of Prague?” The sanitation employee rolled his eyes and stated, “Trdelník. When vacationers eat by means of the ice cream in direction of the highest, they only throw out the fried dough. They barely even eat the factor.”

I’ve to admit that after witnessing the beginning and excessive progress of Prague’s trdelník trade during the last 20 years, I had by no means tasted one. So, on my penultimate day in Prague, I bought a sugar-coated pastry (minus the add-on ice cream) at a stand on the Previous City Sq.. It was flaky and comfortable however so bland it was nearly tasteless. Like practically each trdelník-consuming vacationer in Prague, I ate about half of it earlier than it bought chilly and rigor mortis-like, after which tossed the remainder of it within the bin.