Tradition and Innovation in Proença-a-Nova Foodways

With this paper, we analyse the data that was collected 20 years ago by a team of colleagues on the traditional cuisine and gastronomy in the Pinhal Region, focusing attention on changes in food production visible in the consumerism process through public restoration nowadays, in a specific municipality: Proença-a-Nova. We look mostly on the food products that are part of the identity of the concerned territory. The dynamics of cultural change as a concern to our research, which involves our students and us from the hotel management degree in ISEC Lisboa, which has an interest in the sustainability of ecological systems and its elements of attraction for foreigners or tourists. We present the first paper produced within the research that involves nine more councils of the territory that concerns the Pinhal Region and River Tagus Basin. Crossing the data collected by ethnographic fieldwork, and ethnological analysis, with TripAdvisor, published information about customers’ opinion on the food menus of its registered restaurants. We verified that traditional food, in what concerns its production and ways of serving, is taken as an attraction to the visitors. Innovation in the creative process of food making can enhance the local heritage within a means of communication where all the senses used as integrating parts of a learning process that can involve locals and foreigners.