The Book of Lviv Flavours: Jewish Pages
a cultural route that uses food to reveal Lviv’s Jewish heritage as part of the city’s shared memory.
About the route
Dishes and names of Jewish origin have long been part of everyday life in Lviv: they are found in home recipes, cafés and restaurant menus. Yet most often we do not know where they came from. The route narrows the gap between habit and understanding.
Food as a language of memory
We do not reduce Jewish cuisine to exoticism or nostalgia. Through what was cooked, sold and eaten in the city, things that are hard to convey with dates become visible: everyday life, the neighbourliness of different communities, mutual influences and their own boundaries, including those set by kashrut. Each stop on the route – a factory, a mill, a market, a café – has its own story, built on archival sources and culinary texts. We create the narrative together with bearers of the Jewish cultural tradition: it is a story told from the inside, not from the outside.
How to walk the route
You can walk the route on your own: on foot with your phone, or online from anywhere. Each stop has a story in English, and audio stories in Ukrainian in two versions: a short one for the walk and a longer one for a deeper dive. There are also archival photos and recipes. For those who love paper, there is a printed map with QR codes leading to the materials.
Get involved
Do you know a place connected with Jewish food or the culinary life of Lviv that is not yet on the map – a former bakery, shop, café or a faded inscription? Tell us. We will review your suggestion, look for sources and, if they can be found, add the place to the route.
Who we are
The project is run by the NGO “Galician Cuisine Club” with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, in partnership with the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Warsaw).
Team:
- Marianna Dushar – author of the concept;
- Lola Landa – curator of the culinary narrative, Jewish cuisine chef;
- Inna Zolotar – route curator;
- Romana Lev – project manager;
- Vsevolod Polishchuk – communications.