Food in the time of Corona: The Rise of the New-Normal Cuisine

Two years ago, a week after I moved to Vienna, I went for my religious weekend market stroll. I stopped, fascinated, to admire the first morels my eyes had ever laid on. As my curious nose approached the mushroom in all its regal beauty, I was stopped by a loud and unintelligible outcry from the stall-keeper. ‘You’re contaminating them!’ is what my then-boyfriend translated from the old man’s strong Viennese slang. Needless to say, I did not have a cold. And this was pre-coronavirus, too.

As I sit on my couch waiting for this pandemic to end, these lingering thoughts seem a thing of an unimaginable past. And since recently our lives have been a pell-mell sprint between disinfectants and banana bread, smelling fresh produce at the market seems somewhat trivial. And yet, will we ever be able to do that again?

How has corona reshaped our relationship with the world of food and drinks? Have our perceptions and behaviours changed? How is the industry coping with the innumerable challenges? And alas, what is this new normal cuisine?

Habemus gluten

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