No matter where you are in the world, Google Arts and Culture’s “Sabores de México” collection seeks to give Mexican food lovers access to more than 5,000 works of art, illustrations, recipes, stories, educational material, and videos related to Mexican gastronomy.
The collection, available at g.co/saboresdemexico starting this Monday, has the support of more than 30 local institutions such as the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Tourism of the Government of Mexico, the Soumaya Museum, and the Franz Mayer, as well as secretariats of culture of the state governments of Oaxaca and Jalisco to digitize this cultural heritage related to Mexican gastronomy.
This project took 18 months to prepare and has 200 stories to talk about Mexican gastronomy, even starting from what type of food consumer you are “foodie”, you just like to see, historian or you want to find new flavors. In these stories, you can take a tour of the famous chiles en nogada, go through a gastronomic tour in Mexico City, learn about ancestral ceremonies related to food or know how to eat insects the proper way.
In addition, along with these pieces, some 200 stories present different angles of current Mexican gastronomy, ranging from traditional cooks from states such as Oaxaca and Guanajuato, to samples about the preparation of Chile en Nogada or the use of exotic ingredients, such as the Izote flower in the state of Veracruz or the harvest of insects, related to the use of the fantastic biodiversity that the country has.
In part, this project has to do with an effort to recover the country’s tourism sector, “in alliance with Sectur and other organizations we seek to help in the digital transformation of the sector and give greater visibility to the attractiveness that Mexico represents in domestic tourism as international”, Julian Coulter, Country Director of Google Mexico.
In “Sabores de México” you can take a virtual tour and learn the stories of people from the different iconic markets in the country, learn the vision of chefs such as Enrique Olvera from “Pujol” or Martha Ortiz from “Dulce Patria”, and also, have recipes for some of the most recognized dishes from all over the country on hand through the Flavors of Mexico list on the Google Mexico YouTube channel.
This tour joins others such as the gastronomy of Japan and many others with which it has created a collection of more than six million files with the participation of more than 8,000 curators, with more than 2,500 partners, and in more than 85 countries around the world.
“This project fills us with pride because it allows us to confirm more and more that technology serves to bring cultures, education and democratize the access that people can have, no matter where they are, to the cultural heritage that Latin America has for the world ”, says Adriana Noreña, Google Vice President for Latin America.
To carry out “Sabores de México”, the more than 30 Google partners determined the works that they were going to share for digitization, which occurred in various ways, either through the use of Google Ad Camera for the detailed digitization of the works of art, the use of Google Street View for tours of places such as agave fields or markets, according to Luisella Mazza, head of global operations at Google Arts and Culture.
For Google Arts and Culture, this is the beginning of this project, as cultural institutions will be able to continue adding content to this collection.
No matter where you are in the world, Google Arts and Culture's “Sabores de México” collection seeks to give Mexican food lovers . . .