Food and culture: social practices and identity

Food

One of the best ways to learn about culture is to go through the stomach: by learning about a culture's cuisine. Both through my own experiences and via the experiences and advice of others, I have come to appreciate diversity in ways that can never be done by reading or intellectual learning alone. For example, I recently ate at a Sri Lankan restaurant. There are few Sri Lankan restaurants outside of Sri Lanka, so this was a special eating experience. The culture is imparted through the flavors, but also by the decor and the service. My recent experience in an Ethiopian restaurant solidified my knowledge that food is one of the best ways to be introduced to a culture. When reading the posts of my classmates, I can related well to their experiences. One of my classmates writes about eating in Toronto, one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Another classmate writes about restaurants in North Carolina. The lens of my classmates offers insight into experiences I have yet to have. Through my experiences, and reading about the experiences of my classmates, I learned that culture is expressed through the specific flavors of cuisine, their attitudes towards alcohol with dining, their attitudes during service, the decor, and methods of food presentation.

The first restaurant I would describe in terms of how it relates to its parent culture is the Ethiopian restaurant that I personally visited. The decor and music of the restaurant were unmistakably Ethiopian in character. There was not even a shred of doubt that this was Ethiopian, and not from any other country in the world except perhaps for Eritrea. However, the posters on the wall spoke to the fact that we were indeed in an Ethiopian restaurant. Having never been to Ethiopia, I cannot attest to the true authenticity of the experience. However, I can say that the music and the overall ambiance was real in the sense that there were no white servers or workers. The food was also richly flavored, and the "kitfo" dish came out raw as requested. This is directly opposed to the Western/American fear of raw meats. The service was also slow compared to the service in an American restaurant. Whereas many American customers find the service too slow and want to complain, other people understand that part of the Ethiopian culture is to be relaxed and at ease. This corresponds to the method of eating Ethiopian food, which is with the hands and done slowly. American food is sometimes eaten fast, in the car or at the desk.