Disciplinary interactions in gastronomy R&D teams

Abstract

In the last two decades, society has been a spectator of a gastronomic revolution. Stakeholders from different disciplines have come together to create projects in this field with a potential social, political, and economic impact at the local and global level. These collaborations could be framed in various forms of disciplinarity (inter-, multi- and transdisciplinary). Transdisciplinarity is studied in order to search an understanding and work methodology that considers all dimensions of gastronomy and proposes real solutions that go beyond the disciplines.Made this contextualization, two specific case studies were analysed: The Alchemist and Mugaritz restaurants. In them, an analysis of the context and the interaction between people from different disciplines were made. The research methods in this work included content analysis of public culinary information and existing documentation published by these restaurants. The core of the analysis is based on 6 interviews conducted with culinary professionals and gastronomic scientists from the R&D department from each restaurant.In the two case studies, it was concluded that there is an interdisciplinary interaction, but other transdisciplinary attitudes and characteristics could be identified. This serves as an inspiration and sets the germ to mediate future projects in gastronomy that propose responses adapted to the problems that gastronomy currently faces.