What is Slow Food?

You may already know it, but Slow Food is all about the consumption of snails, slugs, sloths, and other glacially-paced creatures.

I’m joking; obviously. But what is Slow Food, really?

You may have heard the term bandied about in culinary circles, but it’s about far more than just the food itself.

Instead, it’s about celebrating locally sourced, traditionally-made meals with sustainable ingredients that haven’t lost their moral compass along the way. Good, clean, and fair is the aim.

Sounds easy enough, but there are a lot of facets. So let’s work from the ground, up.

Indigenous Tradition & Knowledge

Peru is a diversity hotspot; no doubt about it! There are over 4000 documented varieties of potato, for example. But it’s more than that - Peru’s Amazon region contains a huge variety of edible foods that have been cultivated by the indigenous population for millennia.

By protecting and sharing their traditional knowledge of native crops these communities act as guardians of biodiversity; slowing the encroachment of industrialized practices, and safeguarding the farming methods that have kept their ecosystem in balance for so long.

Community

At its core, Slow Food is about people. It creates opportunities for farmers, cooks, youth, and Indigenous communities to share knowledge, support each other, and be heard.

Together, these networks give small, individual producers a stronger voice in conversations about how food should be grown, valued, and protected.

Chefs

Chefs can be the catalysts making change happen, with their heavyweight restaurants and influential command of foodie pop-culture. Some big names have even put their suppliers - literally - on the menu, encouraging recognition and fair wages for those who provide the media of their art.

Know Gastón Acurio? He’s played a huge role in bringing Slow Food to the fore by championing relatively unknown indigenous foods, and pushing them to international acclaim.

Policy

Policy: Yawn, right? Sometimes the boring stuff is important, too, but I’ll keep it brief - because the focus on good, clean, and fair food doesn’t stop at the kitchen door. In Peru, Slow Food principles are well-aligned with broader efforts to improve public health and protect local food systems, including legislation like Law 30021, which promotes healthier diets and food environments. There. That wasn’t so bad.

But what about the actual food?

I hear you. So here’s an example of what Slow Food might look like on your plate…
Let’s journey to Peru’s Tacna region for a bowl of picante a la tacneña.

As with some of the best cuisines out there (lookin’ at you, Italy), this dish was born from necessity, rather than excess.

Its ingredients are sourced locally - nothing coming further than a few miles from where we sit.

In true nose-to-tail style, it often uses offal like tripe, dried meat, and sometimes cow’s feet to make the most of the animal we’re using.

The preparation typically takes days rather than hours with slow rehydrations, intentional flavor-layering, and a commitment to traditional methods.

The distinctive local flavors have been passed down through the generations, and are super specific to the region - tying food and place together, and providing an anchor for regional identity.

Good, clean, fair.

This might be a local specialty, but zoomed-out, each regional dish like picante instills pride and stewardship into Peruvian cuisine as a whole. And that’s an incredibly potent power.