On culinary tourism: reclaiming & marketing heritage
The tourist experience will usually imply eating at some point, but food also lends itself to tourism “back home”; what is it we are participating in when enticed into purchasing certain products on supermarket shelves and in open air markets, or choosing particular ethnic restaurants, attending regionally theme-based dinners, ordering a drink or even cooking for Thanksgiving?
“Traditional” foods are increasingly reinvented in the marketplaces of the first world, and assigned value by association to specific origins, cultures and narratives, as Mink demonstrates with the stone crab phenomenon. The production of regional cuisines bolsters local economies and contributes to the tourist experience, helping to shape (and sell) a distinct impression of a place, branding the location with flavor (“Sabor!”).
Ironically, “traditional peoples” have been struggling to hold onto their culinary heritage with less success.
The local food question is entangled with environmental issues and global economics, as more plants and animals are patented, genetically engineered, bred, farmed, harvested/trapped, processed, packaged, frozen, shipped and flown to different parts of the country and the world, and as their natural habitats change or disappear.
An interesting example of producing culinary tourism occurs at the National Museum of the American Indian in Wahington, D.C., where the planning team hit the commercial and educational jackpot: the Mitsitam Café on the first floor offers traditional foods from Native communities of the Americas, from wild Northwest Coast salmon, buffalo burgers, wild rice and frybread to tamales, peanut soup and quinoa made with Andean recipes. This effort is based on the museum’s mission to being a cultural experience, conveyed on every front- architecture, landscaping and exhibitions- and culminating in the shops and the restaurant. It became a prime site for education, making the public aware of the foods that they may have not realized are traditional, and introducing varieties of foods otherwise considered exotic. Needless to say, it is a major source of revenue (the museum is free). To the locals, it also instantly became the best place to eat on the National Mall, known for its overpriced and generic cafeteria fast food.
For a great ethnographic take on Native cooking in Mexico, I am delighted to share with you an indigenous filmmaker’s side project: “Oaxaca, Simple Flavors” was concieved by Yolanda Cruz, who studied film at UCLA but is from a Chatin community in Oaxaca, Mexico. She has a website (www.petate.com) and her book is featured at:
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=5fde02a442368cf23760d27b34fd85ad
Yolanda notes that "In the villages, they don't give you recipes, they tell you how to make a meal, and they say, 'a pinch of salt, not a spoonful' … you have to translate that language into what is known as a recipe." The article states she “presents us with recipes but also with a millenarian culture and descriptions of present-day individuals that belong to it… [it] makes us want to become better acquainted with that Mexican region through a trip that begins with "Nopales in Salsa Verde" and concludes with "Don Patricio's Ceviche."