

Ark of Taste Kenya (2nd Edition). Michele F. Fontefrancesco, Dauro Zocchi and Charles Barstow eds. 2024 Vicolo de Pavone Editore, Italy. 292 pages.
Jon Holtzman (Western Michigan University)
Ark of Taste Kenya documents and discusses a wide range of Kenyan foods within the lens of the Slow Food movement. It seeks to catalog the interconnections between biodiversity and food heritage through a focus on a wide array of potentially threatened indigenous plants and other Kenyan food products. In doing so it aims to preserve not only unique tastes but moreover contribute to food security though the protection of crops in particular that are well adapted to the local environment.
The volume is the 11th Ark of Taste Atlas, which so far have covered eight countries, and is an expanded and updated second edition following the initial publication of Ark of Taste Kenya in 2018. It is a collaborative effort between the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy, working under the Sustainable Agrifood Systems Strategies project and three Kenyan universities, including over 50 Kenyan students who “…were taught to identify, describe, and communicate about local food heritage following the Ark of Taste approach” (p.8). Beyond this text, Slow Food has a number of established projects in Kenya, which are drawn upon in discussion both of particular food items as well as the overall effort.
The book begins with several short essays, some of which expand on the principal framework and goals of the text while others discuss some specific aspect of Kenyan indigenous foods or issues related to them. The essays framing the volume begin with an introduction by the three main authors, followed by pieces on “Gastronomic decolonization” (Fontefrancesco), and the methodology employed in the project of food scouting research (Zocchi) which they define as the ethnographic documentation of a wide range of facets concerning indigenous foods. Four more specific essays follow from other contributors. These more specific essays are all interesting, though their placement feels a bit awkward in that they are too specific to be create a general framework for the volume while on the other hand they overlap in inconsistent ways with the catalogue of Kenyan foods that follow.
The bulk of the book is dedicated to a catalogue of Kenyan foods organized into the categories of fruits and vegetables, honey, meat and fish, processed products, and staples. Each entry begins with an infographic that includes the local name for the food, its scientific and sometimes English name, an illustration of the food (which for plants and fish would enable identification), and short descriptive text concerning its characteristics, how it is grown, harvested or made, the community it comes from and the like. This is followed by a description of approximately 500 words that covers an overview of each food along with its culinary treatment, product history and current uses.
The range of foods is good, including numerous foods of each product type and foods from a range of ethnic groups and regions. The groups surveyed are weighted towards Kenya’s largest agricultural communities but there are significant inclusions from pastoralists and foragers. Fruits and vegetables fit most clearly within the book’s focus on biodiversity and food security and slightly more space (57 pages) is devoted to unique foods of this type. These fall into a variety of subcategories, some being wild fruits, many being domesticated or semi-domesticated types of greens (which are well represented in Kenyan cuisine), as well as a handful of local varieties of more broadly used cultivars. The section of meat and fish is comparable in length (60 pages), though it is rather more heterogeneous, including unique species of fish (and a few insects), a few varieties of “heritage breeds” of chicken and small livestock, a few smaller game animals, and several varieties of preserved meat. The section on honey is perhaps the most granular, in some cases identifying different types of honey within the same community based on the type of plant the bees are feeding upon, though in a few instances types of honey produced by different types of bees. The section on processed products describes a significant number of locally produced alcoholic beverages and porridges produced with grains, honey and other fermentable materials, as well as a handful of salts or similar products, some cooked dishes, and baked products. The final section focusses on staples, particularly more heritage varieties which, like the section on fruits and vegetables, fits well with the focus on biodiversity. The section catalogues a range of carbohydrates such as several types of no longer common millet, varieties of bananas, cassava and other endogenous foods as well as special varieties of maize—introduced to Kenya in the late 19th century—that serve particular culinary or social roles, but which are disappearing in the face of higher yielding hybrid varieties.
The book concludes with several sections discussing Slow Food and Ark of Taste as general projects, as well as initiatives in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa. The final section lists some Slow Food Presidia in Kenya. Presidia is the term used for projects in which Slow Food works with local communities and producers to aid them in “…connecting to alternative markets that are more sensitive to their situation and appreciative of their high quality products (262).” The final chapter describes and provides contract information for eleven specific Slow Food Presidia in Kenya such as Lare Pumpkins, Pokot Ash Yogurt and Maasai Red Sheep.
Overall, this is an impressive project that highlights a wide range of mostly lesser known foods from a variety of ethnic groups around Kenya. At the same time there are some peculiarities that may render aspects of the catalogue somewhat uneven or unusual for scholars, cooks and eaters of Kenya. Part of this lies in aspects of the methodology while others emanate from the somewhat ironic impetus for the project, which is to decolonize Kenyan gastronomy via a project led by and informed by the sensibilities of Italian epicurean academics. The goal of the project is, it should be noted, not to document what is eaten in Kenya but rather Kenyan foods that have unique sensory qualities, are tied to a specific place or people, are produced in limited quantities and are threatened with extinction/disuse. Thus, foods that are uniquely Kenyan/East African do not fit within the scope of the volume if they are widely consumed and remain popular, such that in many cases the inclusion in the volume might be seen as the result of NOT being eaten rather than being eaten, for instance as varieties of wild or semi-wild greens fall into disuse because other cultivated varieties are found by local communities to be easier to obtain or even tastier. In some instances, there is a sense that the combination of the framework and the methodology creates objects rather than documents them. Kenyans living in a variety of environments have different foods, or variations on common foods, but not all of these are actually meaningful (or ever were) until an outside group with specific interests comes in to make them meaningful. This is not necessarily problematic if one views this as a project to document disappearing tastes, but is on shakier ground when the aim is to preserve “food heritage”.
While that critique largely stems from the project’s orientation, there are complexities introduced by the methodology, as well. The project had over 50 Kenyan researchers, and additionally products could be nominated by anyone, but these researchers disproportionately represented the largest and most educated of the 40-70 (depending on how you count) ethnic groups in Kenya. Consequently, some communities were the subject of a great deal of the project’s focus, while many others were not included at all. Moreover, given the Slow Food focus on foods rooted in specific communities some foods that are quite widespread across Kenya were described with a misleading degree of specificity, creating them as heritage foods specific to a particular community. An especially noticeable example of this is the entry on the maize/millet beer busaa. While busaa is one of the most widespread home brewed alcoholic drinks found across most of Kenya—and as such probably should not be viewed within the Slow Food framework at all–the entry describes it as a product of the Luhya ethnic group, especially the Tiriki clan. In other cases, items are described as very specific to an ethnic group when in fact what is actually being described is the name in a particular local language for foods where the same or a very similar food exists in other communities but simply named in their own local language. In other cases, especially notable in respect to breeds of livestock, a handful of types are identified as “heritage breeds” when among the numerous varieties of non-standardized breeds these do not stand out as more unique than others in objective terms. For example, we are given the names of one breed of goat, two sheep and several chickens (but no cows…), which implies that these objectively stand out for their uniqueness. Rather, it appears that these are ones that, either in the course of research or other projects have been identified, perhaps through happenstance, as ones that can be integrated into the Slow Food project.
With these modest caveats, this book is an excellent contribution in documenting the breadth of Kenyan foods. It is an excellent resource for both lay and scholarly readers and practitioners interested in heritage and disappearing foods, as well as for researchers of African food systems who may have in depth knowledge of particular communities but have less sweeping knowledge across a range of communities practicing differing lifestyles.