'CULINARY TOURISM'| A review Essays show our taste for differences

Sections of the book explore culinary identity and perceptions of authenticity.
By THERESA M. HEGEL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
"Culinary Tourism," edited by Lucy M. Long (The University of Kentucky Press, $35)
"Culinary Tourism" is a collection of critical essays exploring the role of food -- its preparation, consumption and the rituals and traditions surrounding it -- in tourism.
Culinary tourism, defined as "food as a subject and medium, destination and vehicle, for tourism," functions on several different levels. People may elect to try exotic foods while on vacation in strange, new places. They may travel to a specific place with the express goal of sampling that region's cuisine. They may eat at a local ethnic restaurant to have an "authentic" experience of a people's culture and cuisine. In addition, buying cookbooks or watching cooking programs is a method of culinary tourism that can be enjoyed from the comforts of one's own home.
Another aspect of culinary tourism is the phenomenon of "groups using food to 'sell' their histories and to construct marketable and publicly attractive identities."
Something different
As editor Lucy M. Long, an assistant professor in Bowling Green State University's Department of Popular Culture, explains, "culinary tourism is more than trying new and exotic foods." It, like tourism in general, is "a perception of otherness, of something being different from the usual." This perception varies between individuals and is not merely limited to differences in locale.
Long sees food as existing on different continuums. For an individual, all foods fall somewhere between exotic and familiar, edible and inedible, and palatable and unpalatable. A food's edibility is "culturally specific." Food considered perfectly acceptable by one culture may raise questions about whether it is safe to eat by another. Palatability is "aesthetic rather than cognitive." As Long notes, "Foods may be considered edible, but their selection for consumption will depend on whether or not they are considered savory, appetizing, or appropriate for particular contexts."
The contents
The book's essays are divided into three sections. The first explores culinary tourism in public and commercial contexts. Included is an essay about perceived authenticity in Thai restaurants. Jennie Germann Molz describes how diners' preconceived notions of what Thai culture is and how its food should taste and look -- notions often formed by experiences at other Thai restaurants -- help define the decor and menu of such ethnic restaurants.
She also notes that the menus of Thai restaurants are "self-contradicting" because they will often claim to be authentic but still adapt to "Western parameters of culinary acceptability." For example, restaurants will tone down the spiciness of their food at customers' requests, and most would never dream of indulging in the authentic Thai practice of "serving chicken entrails or fish heads with particular dishes." Marketability often wins out over authenticity.
The second section deals with culinary tourism in private and domestic contexts and includes an essay on the food of the Basques and a study of the eating experiences of Mormon missionaries.
Constructed tourism
Dealing with culinary tourism in constructed and emerging contexts, the third set of essays includes one that explores places such as Lindsborg, Kansas, a Midwestern town that redefined itself as "Little Sweden U.S.A." In the shadows of a flagging agricultural industry, the town reconstructed itself as a tourist destination, evoking, through food and ambience and seasonal events, a nostalgic view of its Swedish heritage.
"Culinary Tourism" is an interesting collection of essays about a little-studied aspect of popular culture. Long and her other excellent contributors will give the attentive reader much food for thought about how food can define a culture and how exploring the food of another culture can provide new insights about oneself and one's own culture.
If nothing else, the book's descriptions of various exotic and familiar foods will leave readers hungry to indulge in some culinary tourism of their own.
hegel@vindy.com