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Sustainability within the food system is one of society’s most pressing challenges and sustainable gastronomy has emerged as the gastronomy sector's response to this critical issue. Gastronomic professionals are important actors because they mediate between producers, suppliers, and consumers. Although they are generally considered to encourage sustainable food choices and practices, little is known about how sustainability is put into practice in their everyday work. The aim of this thesis is therefore to explore and analyze how sustainability, gastronomy, and culture intertwine within the Swedish gastronomic sector.

The thesis is based on two ethnographic studies: one on food storage and preservation practices in Swedish restaurants, and one following wild Arctic char through its gastronomic supply chain in Sápmi. The theoretical framework draws on cultural sustainability, culinary capital, social norms, commoditization and singularization, and imaginaries as understood within cultural political economy. The findings show that sustainable gastronomy is shaped by dominant imaginaries of locality, seasonality, skilled and creative professionals, authenticity, and heritage. These imaginaries are also enacted as stewardship, self-reliance, and craftsmanship, which can be understood as forms of culinary capital. Gastronomic actors translate sustainability into practice while acting as intermediaries who showcase food products and practices through imaginaries of quality, tradition, and place. The study also identifies a gap between sustainability as imaginary and as practice, shaped by cultural meanings, social norms, access and exclusion, and the material conditions of food production, preparation, and service.

Sustainable gastronomy is not enacted as a fixed set of principles, but through everyday negotiations between locality and accessibility, craftsmanship and efficiency, ecological stewardship and economic viability, as well as cultural meanings and market value. Sustainable gastronomy is best understood as context-dependent and in motion: continuously negotiated, adapted, and transformed by the actors who put it into practice. Addressing these tensions requires more than individual commitment; it calls for collaboration across the sector, strong institutional support, and locally grounded strategies that treat culture as central to how sustainability is understood and enacted.