From Farm to Fridge: Wrocław’s Bold Recipe for Sustainable Gastronomy

Today, we invite you to explore the vibrant and historic city of Wrocław, located in the heart of southwestern Poland. Famous for its stunning architecture and rich history, Wrocław has gained a growing reputation as a culinary destination, even more so as it was recently included in the prestigious Michelin Guide, featuring 22 distinguished restaurants. In this episode, we invited Jakub Mazur, Deputy Mayor of Wrocław, to take a seat at the table. He will share his insights into the city's unique food scene and its commitment to building a more sustainable future.

Jakub Mazur : 
Hello everyone, bonjour, Dzień dobry, I’m very happy to be here. 
My name is Jakub Mazur, I'm deputy mayor of Wroclaw. This is the third largest city in Poland. I'm very proud of my city and of course I love Wroclaw. I was born there, I've been studying there, I have been deputy mayor for six years there. Wroclaw is a wonderful historical city. One thousand years of history and almost one million people, because we welcomed 200,000 Ukrainians recently. So now it's a mid-size city, but very successful.

We used to be relatively poor 30-40 years ago, but since we started to be a part of the European Union, that proudly we admit to be, we started to transform ourselves. Eight years ago, the whole population of Wrocław was German. Now, after the Second World War, it was changed into Polish one, and now it's again European. 
We are proud of this 1000 years of history because we are truly European. I'm proud that city is very European, very open. Then we were European capital of culture. So we had a lot of investments in culture, buildings, institutions, and it brought a total different quality also with food.

We started like 20 years ago to invite people to Wrocław, that used to be relatively not attractive among many European cities. But then we invested a lot of money and a lot of emotions. We created the really free city. We have the slogan : « the meeting place ». And people are willing to meet by the table sometimes. So we rely on history, culture and, of course, economy. That is essential to develop such a beautiful city.

Gastronomy is always the essential part of every city, every culture, every community. So for us, as a meeting place, we want people to meet by the table with gastronomy.

I'm living in the city center, so that’s where are concentrated all those new restaurants. The fancy ones, but also the street food, the food courts that are appearing especially during the hot days, in the spring or summer period.
Like every week I can be in a completely new place, some of them are disappearing some of them are appearing with a better quality. People are learning and at the same time, my fellows, they are expecting the unexpected; they want to be surprised with the taste.

In Wroclaw, for instance we have a couple of young guys who decided to have something like kebab, so Arabic food, and it's so fascinating that every time I'm crossing this point, this is not even a restaurant, there is at least 20 people waiting for this, day and night. I haven't tried it because I don't have time to spend an hour in line waiting for this, but it must be something significant.

Apart from that, of course, you know, we have about 200,000 Ukrainians, so they also brought a lot of culture. So we have new tastes, new preparation. On the other hand, we have a strong Korean community: 5,000 Koreans because 20 years ago, LG, the company, they had huge investment and since then they are investing even more, so they are bringing a lot of Korean companies to the region. It's not only Korean restaurant or the Asian one, but it's also the production of food that we can enjoy. It is amazing. At the same time, we experience a lot of Italian, French, the Spanish restaurants and we enjoy it a lot, even English restaurants that are not so famous with excellent food, but we have some and proudly enjoying to have it mixing with the products from local agriculture, local producers so they are plenty of tastes that you can enjoy and everybody can pick his own or her own and that's the beauty of gastronomy.

Jessica Ferey :
Wrocław has been inspired by the Food Capitals Network and one of its founding city members, Lyon, France, for many years. Being part of this network means sharing, learning and connecting about gastronomy with peers from around the world.

Jakub Mazur:
As Wrocław, we are relatively young, with huge ambition, and we know how to learn from our older brothers and sisters like The Food Capitalys by Délice. Délice Network and Lyon as a city, as a capital itself, provide the unique example of how we can achieve the knowledge, experience and some uniqueness.

By gastronomy, we understand the restaurants that are affordable, accessible for our students, but also for those who are looking for something more sophisticated, the fanciest restaurants.

And for the first time this year, Wrocław will be in Michelin Guide because we were trying so hard for the last couple of years and we failed probably several times, but this year they said, you got it. This is history happening on our eyes. When I heard about this, I was so excited but I knew that this was the confidential news, so I couldn't even share it with anyone. I was really excited about being there finally, eventually, after so many years of dreaming about this, Michelin Guide is something exceptional. It's a cherry on this cake and we've been waiting for it.

Personally, I have to say that I was involved in this process from the very beginning. Indeed in my previous life, before I used to be deputy mayor of the city, I used to travel a lot and eat a lot. I experienced lots of starred restaurants all over the world from Tokyo to of course France in Paris. I was a huge fan of becoming one of the members of this guide but Polish gastronomy needed to be adapted, needed to learn. We love Polish cuisine because it is affordable, accessible, of course, because this is our mama's and grandmama’s cuisine, but there is always an ambition to be at the top and the most well-known brand is Michelin, for certain. 

That's why I wanted, when I became deputy mayor, I wanted Wrocław to be one of these cities, part of this big family. And no one knows, but with Michelin stars, it brings even a bigger economy, a growth, the development of restaurants, the ambition for other chefs that are operating in the region, it brings money also. So, it has a huge impact on the economic development and in my city I'm also in charge of the economic development and those people who are coming with foreign investment, the expats for instance, they are asking where do you have a fine dining restaurant? How can you prove it's really a fine dining one? So now this is kind of a starting point for Wrocław but I'm sure that step by step, year by year, we will achieve more stars maybe or more awards and more good chefs. And of course I'm very happy, very proud that we managed to be a part of Michelin Guide family.

As a young city with gastronomy, with mixed history, we were always very ambitious about establishing a variety of chefs and the variety of choice. And that's why we, for example, we have a Gastro Academy, the Academy of Gastronomy, we would say. And this Gastro Academy is a program dedicated to young chefs, young and old, because we are all young, to become masters, to get to know what is essential, how to produce good quality of dishes and food. It is dedicated to all those people who want to leverage the knowledge, but also for those who are starting their path becoming chefs…

Jessica Ferey:
For years, Wrocław has focused on sustainable urban development, particularly by promoting a healthy, local and sustainable food scene. One of the city's projects includes Wrocław's City Farm, or Urban Farm, an ambitious initiative to increase local food in its citizens' plates.

Jakub Mazur:
Wroclaw for many years was trying to become one of those cities who is sustainable in many ways. So that's why we want to have sustainable agriculture in the surrounding municipalities, so as a metropolitan region we also work on this. We want to have our own resilience, and self-sufficiency. It is impossible to achieve 100% of self-sufficiency, but Wrocław had this ambition to have a good quality of life for our inhabitants. And since we are growing and we doubled our population in the last 30 years, so you can imagine that we have new demands, new approaches, and people are aware of what is happening with climate change, so for us it's even more important because we are proud who we are and who we can become.

The food sovereignty and the city farm that we established last year is a part of this ambition. It's essential and it's working perfectly well. We have two and a half hectares. We started this last year, and we are proud to produce now 70 tons of potatoes, cabbages, pumpkins. Those products are already in our public institutions like schools, kindergarten, nurseries and they are working. They are sustainable, very responsible and it is produced by people who are in some difficult moment of their life, so you can only imagine that we try to provide many solutions with one initiative. 
We are the first one in Poland to have this significant change on the way, but also the first one who is trying to bring this approach in a scalable dimension. And now we are thinking about how to scale up and how to find another places, not only here in Wrocław, but also in other cities, in the region and also in the capital of Poland, Warsaw. We have this discussion with all the biggest cities in Poland. It seems to be so attractive. Everybody wants to know what is it? How did you do this? It is always about good people. If you have dedicated, full of passion people who want to make it happen, it will be done.

Jessica Ferey: 
To address ecological challenges, Wrocław also launched one of the largest zero-waste campaigns in Poland a few years ago. One of the unique examples that really struck me is the open fridges, where people can share their leftovers with their neighbours, helping to tackle food waste effectively.

Jakub Mazur:
Another initiative to become a more sustainable city is “Wrocław Do Not Waste.” We started this in 2019. It is about education, because we started with how to bring the awareness of drinking tap water in Wrocław and not to use any plastic bottles. How can we not waste any food in our schools, kindergartens and in this public educational system. Of course, we started with food, with water, with resources that we have. A very symbolic, significant part of this, is that we have like open backyard fridges. So, if you have too much food, especially after long weekends and holidays or some kind of celebrations we all love, when we are buying a lot of products and cooking a lot of food, and you know it is not possible for you to eat it all, you can share it with people. We have tens of those fridges open, accessible in the streets, that are located in all the city, and people are using it, people are donating food. Even in the private sector, the shops, are using it.

Food has the superpower to improve quality of life because it has impact on inhabitants, visitors, tourism, ecosystems not only in the city but also in metropolitan areas. Food connects people to build communities; to make life better and food makes them smiling.

Thank you very much. See you in Wroclaw hopefully.