Story

What is ZEXE?

ZEXE is the phonetic perception when pronouncing the German numeral SECHS, meaning six. Used as a slang term in the Bucharest underworld during the interwar period, ZEXE as a password had the role of suddenly interrupting any intimate discussions among the “initiated ones” when a newcomer would show up.

Chances are that ZEXE might stand for a diminutive used by parents, grandparents, intimates, for Zamolxe, the Dacian God, when he was just a child.

(It is well known that all Gods, before becoming the great Gods we all heard of, were once children)

Ce inseamna ZEXE in acceptiunea noastra
Propunem termenul ZEXE ca fiind o parola, o cheie de acces catre o Romanie Gastronomica posibila.

What ZEXE means to us?

EXE is deﬁned as an initiative to restore the old Romanian gastronomy. So what would have happened if:

In 1945, at Yalta, the treaties would have been drafted and signed otherwise, thus giving us, Romanians, the possibility to prove and display our vocation as part of the European culture and its classical values.
The Romanian cuisine would not have been handed over to the canteen workers but it would have remained as a concept to be shaped under the patronage of those persons willing to preserve the idea of culture and vocation, as it has been perceived before 1945 known as the “schism” between the East and the West.
We cannot help but wonder whether the contemporary Zahana* would have looked differently – maybe as our restaurants do today?

* Zahana (rom.): public eating place, located near a slaughterhouse. Since the introduction of some heavy sanitary regulations that do not permit the existence of slaughterhouses in cities, this sort of restaurant has actually vanished.

INVITATION

Pronounce in a loud voice, holding your right hand on your heart, the password: ZEXE!

Join the circle of initiates in this exercise of imagination translated into reality by a group of enthusiastic people, willing and determined to put the Romanian gastronomy on the map of the European culinary values.