Culinary Tourism Response

While writing my first draft of the restaurant review for Zooroona, I forgot that how sensitive the word “authenticity” is. I get annoyed by the non-Asians who generalize all Asian foods and put diverse Asian dishes in one group. I realized how it is easy to unintentionally look down on “authentic foods” in particular cultures and societies. Foods can be very subjective, but it is common these days to generalize ethnic and cultural foods, putting them into stereotypical categorization due to commercializing of them. Long’s Culinary Tourism explains the definitions, conceptual framework, thoughts for otherness, and negotiation of culinary tourism in a very logical way with strong supporting examples. Long’s illustration of incorporation one cultural food to another one because of marketing as cultural foods become commercialized is fascinating. Long talks about Maruchan Ramen that I have eaten before. Maruchan Ramen was one of the most weirdest ramen noodles I have ever had because I was so used to Korean instant noodle’s flavor. That noodle was like spaghetti flavor with unpleasant texture of noodle.

I think that not only in U.S., but in anywhere generalization of one culture is likely to happen. In Korea, Koreans tend to generalize American food. Most of them assume that American foods are all about burgers, fries, and coke, but these are not only American foods. When I went to the McDonald in Korea, I had Shanghai Spicy Burger which is the Korean version of American burger. That burger was spicy to fit in the expectation of Koreans who often eat spicy foods.

The food industry and restaurants are likely to do that to attract customers to eat their transformed cultural food. Long says that “It[Culinary tourism] is about groups using food to ‘sell’ their histories and to construct marketable and publicly attractive identities, and it is about individuals satisfying curiosity” (20). This shows that there is possibility of restaurants to get rid of some factors of cultural foods that are unattractive to American customers which is called unpalatable. So on, “Tasting an Imagined Thailand” by Molz also states about omitting other aspects of certain cultural food: “While most Thai menus include typical dishes, such as Tom Yum soup and Pad Thai noodles, other equally authentic dishes and preparation techniques may be omitted with the customers’ preferences in mind” (57). However, these American customers shouldn’t be criticized by not accepting extremely “authentic” cultural dishes because they are used to their own cultural food.

Yet, it makes me unhappy whenever I see the wrong representation of Korean cultural food in the Korean restaurants in U.S. because it’s Americanized but it’s sold with the label saying “authentic Korean food”. At least these Korean restaurants should stop advocating to Americans that their foods are the best representation of real Korean food. There is no black and white distinction of authentic foods; however, I think that if so called “authentic cultural restaurants” portray one culture in a distorted way to make American customers to be comfortable of what eat, it is wrong to sell these foods. MacCannell claims in Molz’s “Tasting an Imagined Thailand” that “MacCannell says that the true back region isn’t available to tourists, but that the travel industry, understanding the modern tourist’s desire for authenticity, has created a middle ground: staged authenticity” (55). It is so frustrating for me to see some Korean restaurants have the Chinese dragon paintings and sculptors of Buddha which are not exact Korean culture to give a sense of stereotypical “Asian-ness” to American consumers who stereotype Asian culture.

It depends on the purposes of restaurants’ owners to operate their cultural restaurants: either serving Americanized cultural foods to make profits from American customers who don’t really know about its culture or sincerely working on representing cultural foods while including accurate image of its culture. There is no complete authenticity, but I hope producers of cultural food restaurants regard cultural foods more seriously, and I also hope American consumers of these restaurants are more open-minded about taste of other cultural foods different from American food.