We ask Amazon to change the category of some books from food to fantasy

uIn an initiative group made up of experts in gastronomy, they request, through an open letter addressed to Amazon, that some books about Romanian gastronomy marketed by this company be changed from Gastronomy to Fantasy.

The initiative was initiated by the culinary journalist Cosmin Dragomir, by the publisher of the vinul.ro magazine – Cezar Ioan (both initiators of the Romanian National Gastronomy and Wine Day Law) and by Cătălin Mahu, the entrepreneur who runs a chain of restaurants with a Romanian specialty. They were joined by other personalities from the hospitality industry and anyone can support the initiative by signing a petition launched simultaneously with the open letter. You can sign the petition here.

To the attention of Amazon management,

First of all, we would like to congratulate you that through the scale of your business, books that popularize Romanian gastronomy and traditional recipes can reach all corners of the world. We are happy that in this way we can promote our country and its specific dishes, and even if we are aware that Romania is still not a seductive destination for food and wine tourism, we hope that in the near future we will become a target for gourmets and gourmands from many more countries. With a simple search on Amazon sites, we can find dozens of book titles that promise readers authentic or traditional Romanian recipes. Many of them are written by foreign authors and Amazon is quite the singular source through which we can buy these editorials. Therefore, in recent months I have purchased many books, which, at first glance (we refer to the title, cover and sometimes description) present recipes that should be related to what we could define as traditional Romanian cuisine.  

I have analyzed many of these volumes and noticed that many of them belong more to the realm of fantasy and less to realism. There are two big different categories among these books: some that are signed by real people and who, for who knows what reasons, have published texts as a result of redemptive research, and there are books that are printed to order, from collections that cover gastronomy from everyone, misprinted and translated with an ancestor of automatic translation software.

In order not to abuse your time, and with the hope that you will use the time saved by the shortening of this letter to treat our request seriously and expeditiously, we point out to you some of the glaring mistakes found in these books. The end of this letter contains a list of volumes that we submit to your attention and let you know that we are at your disposal for any further details including to send you photos of the recipes that are the subject of this request.

We are proud of the Radăuța soup, but it does not contain guinea pigs. In fact, we like meaty pigs that we fatten for a year, and the little furry ones considered delicacies in other countries are only raised as pets. Tofu is an Asian ingredient that recently entered the Romanian market, and no one could argue that a tofu spread is traditional. Our beloved mitites contain garlic and, with an EU exemption, baking soda, no onion, just as belly soup has no potatoes even in the pans of the least skilled cooks among us. We eat a lot of salmon, but our grandparents and parents wouldn't put it on our plates because it doesn't grow in our rivers, just like the Alaskan King Crab isn't acclimatized around here. We have dozens of types of sarmals, but I have not heard of those with chickpeas around here, and if someone has recently experienced such a recipe, it is only an exception and not at all representative of Romania.

We're aware that the entire Amazon team is working hard to make the service better and better, and it's not unreasonable to think that employees could check every single product out of the millions available.

We are writing you this letter precisely to make your job easier and to prevent you from dissatisfying other customers or even worse misleading them without forethought. And don't think that we claim to be taken at our word, but just spend a little time researching what is claimed in these lines.

We are at your disposal to provide you with dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of other telling examples. We thank you in advance for the time given to our request and with the hope that together we can correctly present the reality, we also present the list of titles that are the subject of this letter:

 All Along The Danube, Marina Polvay

The Dracula Cookbook, Marina Polvay

The Ultimate Romanian Cookbook, Slavka Bodic (111 tasty dishes from Romania to cook right now)

The ultimate Romanian Cookbook Jeri W. Dean (delicious Romanian foods to prepare)

Romanian Cookbook, Liam Luxe

Dracula's board, Nataliya Popova

Romanian Cookbook, Brenda G. Crouch (quick easy and simple authentic recipes from Romania to prepare at home easily)

Romanian Cookbook, Amaya Williams (120 delicious and traditional Romanian recipes to cook right now)

The complete Romanian cookbook, Thelma J. Ruiz

The food & cooking of Romania & Bulgaria, Silvena Johan Lauta   

Signed, the originators of weareromania.com

Cosmin Dragomir, Cezar Ioan, Cătălin Mahu        

contact: cosmin.dragomir@gastroart.ro