Anthropologically speaking, food is undoubtedly the primary need. Nevertheless, as the French semiologist Barthes defends, this need is highly structured, and it involves substances, practices, habits, and techniques of preparation and consumption that are part of a system of differences in signification. Once satisfied, therefore, the first human need becomes a sign as it replaces, sums up, and signalises other behaviours.In this sense, we can speak about a semiotics of food; far from simply coinciding with material needs or physiological and perceptive processes, nutrition concerns all the various activities, discourses, and images that are associated with it. Food is not only a substance for survival and nourishment but is also part of a sign system as it is strictly involved in processes of signification and interpretation.Taste, for instance, goes beyond the individual perception, embracing the intersubjective and collective level. If on the one hand, the taste dimension depends on biological and physiological—and therefore individual—components; on the other hand, it seems to be socially and culturally determined, as it is based on intersubjectively defined patterns of valorisation. Even beyond the gustatory experience, cooking is a technical activity ensuring a transition between nature and culture, as Lévi-Strauss points out in his Mythologiques,, which represent a key reference for the analysis of food symbolism.Building on these considerations and recalling the main existing works in food studies, the present chapter aims at reflecting on the links existing among the various signs, texts, discourses, and practices concerning the gastronomic universe, pointing out the importance of the semiotic approach within such field or research.