The Nostalgia of Food

Few things evoke nostalgia quite like food. A single flavour or familiar aroma can transport us across years and continents in an instant. Long after we've forgotten the route we walked or the sights we saw, it is often that taste that stays with us. 

Around the table, food becomes more than something we eat. It is a setting for family life, conversation and continuity, where recipes are passed down from nonna to the next generation, and regional identity is kept alive through the everyday acts of cooking and connection. It  reminds us of what is worth preserving, and in doing so, becomes a way of imagining what comes next.

The taste of belonging 

For Carlo Ferrigno, Hotel Manager at Hotel Amigo in Brussels, the smell of cooking on a Sunday still carries him back to his childhood in Italy. In Gela, on Sicily’s southern coast, he would wake to the sweet, earthy scent of tomato sauce already softening on the stove. This was his mother’s Sunday signature, rich with garlic, olive oil, potatoes and meat, the result of hours spent preparing lunch for the family. 

“I remember waking in the morning to the smell of tomatoes, with my mother in the kitchen preparing them. Even now, I can still smell the aroma of her cooking”, he recalls.

“It’s not only about sitting at the table, eating. It’s the preparation.” His mother saw that work as “a true pleasure”. 

What stayed with him was the idea that meals should be made with intention, and made meaningful by the people gathered around it: “It’s the moment where you can share ideas and discuss problems. In Italy, family is sacred, not in a religious sense, but because it is so important”. 

It is this philosophy that inspired the Pranzo della Domenica at Bocconi, the hotel’s Italian restaurant. Drawing on the long lunches of his childhood, Carlo wanted to create an experience centred not only on exceptional dishes, but on the simple pleasure of togetherness and being present with family and friends.

Carlo's memories may be rooted in Sicily, but the emotions they evoke are universal. Paul Hart, Executive Chef at The Balmoral in Edinburgh, believes food has a unique ability to unlock moments from our past. Recently, he found himself ordering rice pudding before anything else on the menu, drawn to a dessert that instantly transported him back to his mother's kitchen.

"Food memories are quite often connected to moments in our lives that are so special to us, for all sorts of different reasons," he says. "It's one of those things that can just spark memories for you, nice warm feelings." 

When flavour comes full circle

The nostalgia of food extends far beyond our own memories. It lives in the dishes that come back to restaurant menus, in ingredients once overlooked but now celebrated, and in the producers preserving traditions that might otherwise have been lost. Across Europe, chefs are proving that the future of great meals often lies not in reinventing the past, but in rediscovering it.

As Paul sees it, those patterns are nothing new. "Food is circular, in a way. It comes and goes around. There are always different fashions and trends," he says.

At Brasserie Prince, that sense of return takes a more playful form. Classics remain because they still have room to surprise. "We've just put a prawn cocktail on the menu, served on a toasted crumpet," he adds. "The crumpet soaks up all those flavours. It's a bit different from serving it in a glass." Rather than recreating the past exactly as it was, dishes evolve while retaining the familiarity that made them memorable in the first place.

In London, Andrew Sawyer, Executive Chef at Brown's Hotel, takes a similarly thoughtful approach to the ingredients he chooses: “As a sustainable kitchen, we’re tied to what Mother Nature gifts us." 

Working closely with fishermen in Cornwall, Andrew builds his menus around what the sea is offering and in Britain, that continues to evolve, too. Bluefin tuna has returned in remarkable numbers in recent years, while warmer seas have brought an abundance of octopus. 

On land as at sea, Andrew’s cooking is guided by the same respect for nature. At Downlands Farm, where he sources eggs, pigs turn over the soil, cattle and sheep graze in sequence, and chickens follow them, feeding on insects and completing the cycle. It is regenerative farming influenced by old instincts, closer to mixed agriculture than a modern production line. 

Farming this way changes what reaches the kitchen. At Brown’s, the team has also rediscovered the Iron Age pig, a rare old breed, hairy, tusked and rich in fat, born of slow farming in Dorset. What diners experience is a greater taste, and a way of recovering what modern systems have stripped away.

There is comfort in the cyclical nature of food, in the return of certain dishes, the respect for the seasons and the familiarity of flavours that endure. Perhaps this is why taste becomes travel’s most lasting memory. 

It lies, too, in the care that connects every stage of a meal, from the producer tending the land, to the chef preparing each dish or the parent cooking a family favourite they once enjoyed themselves. For the most thoughtful chefs and producers, the past is not behind them, it inspires what comes next.

Continue your own culinary journey at Hotel Amigo, The Balmoral or Brown's Hotel, where every destination tells its own story.