Food

May 2010

It’s the million-dollar question that everyone in my program has faced, yet no one seems to have a definitive answer. I have certainly given my 30-second elevator rendition of what gastronomy is (“Well er, it’s not cooking school, it’s sort of about the analysis of food’s role in the world…”), but I still have niggling doubts over whether I am simply talking out of my ass. Which is why I was secretly relieved when we had a seminar on gastronomy and its meaning.

Last week, as part of a class on food anthropology, we all had to conduct an ethnographic study of a food production place in town using participant-observation methods (read: hanging out and discreetly taking notes). Rather than choosing one of the town’s many pizzerias or gelato shops, I decided to investigate the one place that has elicited a sort of morbid fascination for me for the last month: The Chinese restaurant in Bra. That’s right, there’s only one, and there isn’t too much other ethnic food in town to speak of, aside from a couple small kebab shops.

Before you ask, no this isn’t a photo of me, it’s the daughter of a family friend, picking Asian pears in the orchard.

“People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?

They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft.