Faculty Club: Lecture 'De Tirana Express' with Sake Slootweg (Food Week)

For culinary writer and university colleague Sake Slootweg, travelling is inextricably linked to food. In De Tirana Express, he takes his audience on a tasty and nostalgic train journey across Europe. With a rich combination of travel and food stories, he takes us to Albania, the country where he lived for several years in his youth.

The lecture is part of the Food Week, which we are organising in collaboration with Future Food Utrecht. The evening will be introduced by Prescilla Jeurink, Managing Director of Future Food Utrecht.

This week will focus on the connection between food and science.

The Tirana Express takes the reader on a journey to the country where Sake moved to at the age of nine and lived for three years. It was the place where he saw half cows hanging from meat hooks at the market. A country with inhabitants who are so hospitable that you always have to stay for dinner. This is where he went to a restaurant for the first time, tasted tomatoes grown in the ground and finally ate something other than potatoes, vegetables and meat. Since leaving at the age of twelve, he has never been back. Nowadays, more and more friends are returning home from their holidays in Albania with stories of a country he apparently no longer knows. Sake decides to go back. 

Programma: 

• 5:45 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.: Doors open with welcome drinks (Living Room)
• 6:00 p.m. – 6:15 p.m.: Introduction by Prescilla Jeurink, Managing Director of Future Food Utrecht
• 6:15 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.: Book presentation of De Tirana Express by Sake Slootweg
• 19:00 – 19:15: Question and answer session
• 19:30 – 21:00: Dinner and opportunity for further discussion (optional)

The cost of the meal (main course, drinks, coffee/tea) is EUR 28.50.

Location: Faculty Club, entrance via the University Hall (Domplein 29, Utrecht)

About the speaker

Sake Slootweg is a communications advisor at Utrecht University and has been writing recipes for “de Volkskeuken” in the Volkskrant newspaper since 2017. As a student, he catered dinners on the canals and trained at the London branch of the famous French cooking school Cordon Bleu, but writing about food is his true passion. Food is the lens through which Sake views and understands the people and world around him, and he knows how to put his observations down on paper in a witty way. Author photo Copyright: Roderik Rotting

During this evening, there will be plenty of opportunity to talk to the speaker and other attendees. The Faculty Club offers a setting where meeting, deepening and reflection come together.