Is This Title Authentic?

Meredith Ashton

Culinary Tourism

Reading Response

20 October 2016

Is This Title Authentic?

            Dean MacCannell analyzes the tourist experience, stating “touristic consciousness is motivated by its desire for authentic experiences.” The work Culinary Tourism by Lucy Long expands upon this statement, analyzing culinary tourism as an exercise motivated by the human curiosity to experience “the other” as an escape from the mundane. This experience can be set on Lucy’s continuum of the exotic to the familiar, as the degree of  desired “authenticity” is individual-specific. The issue is additionally muddled by the fact that the very idea of the “authentic” is socially constructed, holding differing meanings in varied cultural contexts. Due to the individual-specific nature of the culinary tourism critique, I decided to turn inwards to reflect on my experience with authentic (or perhaps, more accurately, inauthentic) tourism.

            One of my first experiences with “other” cultural cuisine was in Disney World: the quintessential icon of “Americanness.” I remember walking around the World Showcase in Disney’s EPCOT theme park, icy cold gelato sticking to my throat in Italy and a Mexican candy skull so sugary my eight-year-old self spit it back out. Who knew that something could have too much sugar? It was fabulous and exotic and exhilaratingly different. My young “tourist’s gaze” was adept at discovering all of the exciting differences between “here and there.” In the matter of a an hour or two I had walked through eleven countries, heard men in plaid kilts blare their bagpipes, watched a belly dancer shake her hips in the din of a Moroccan restaurant, and found no fewer than three gruesome trolls on the Maelstrom ride in Norway.

I was practically a world traveler. It was only the occasional Mickey Mouse-shaped ice cream bar and the surprise spotting of Beauty and the Beast on the cobbled streets of France that reminded me I was still very much in good ol’ America. Disney created a user-friendly type of culinary tourism for its guests, where young American families could experience “the other” as a type of elaborate theatrical imitation, and still have the option of an “American Hot Dog and French Fries” in the conveniently located American Pavilion in the center of the Showcase.

Don’t get me wrong. I freaking love Disney World—some of my fondest childhood memories include consuming fistfuls of colorful Goofy Sour gummy worms with my sister under the backdrop of Cinderella’s Castle. I’ve simply become more aware over the years that Disney’s theme-park-packaged experience falls very far towards the familiar end of the culinary tourism spectrum. While I still enjoy walking the streets of the World Showcase with my family, I now do so with the understanding that it is more of a “show of the world” than an authentic showcase, which is tailored to a very tourist-specific lens. EPCOT presents an experience authentic to Disney World, but not necessarily of the different cultural others that it performs for its guests.