Armenia to Passport National Dishes

YEREVAN, August 1. /ARKA/. Armenia plans to protect its national cuisine at the state level. Sedrak Mamulyan, president of the Development and Preservation of Armenian Culinary Traditions public organization, presented details of this initiative at a press conference on Friday.

"The 'Strategic Concept for the Development of National Cuisine' has been circulated, enshrining national cuisine as state cultural heritage. At the suggestion of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sports, a working group has been formed that includes ethnographers and education specialists, as well as other relevant experts," said Mamulyan.

According to Mamulyan, a significant amount of work is planned — each dish must be documented, and then the draft concept will be submitted to the National Assembly.

Mamulyan reported that the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sports is discussing the idea of a catalog for which citizens will share information on various types of dishes. A significant amount of information has already been collected and published. In particular, the 1963 edition of National Cuisine, edited by Aram Piluzyan, has been reissued.

"All of this simply needs to be classified. Each type of dish needs to be assigned its own 'passport,' indicating all the parameters and its full characteristics. Then, the relevant department should register these dishes as state property. After that, we plan to publish a corresponding encyclopedia," said Mamulyan.-0-