Understanding Gastronomy - Essay Example

Understanding Gastronomy Name: Student Number: Course Code: Word Count: Date of Submission: Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 1.0 Introduction 2 2.0 Gastronomy 2 2.1 Food Trail 2 2.2 Market Excursion 3 2.3 Gastronomic Experiences 4 3.0 Gastronomy and Tourism 4 3.1 Prevalence of Gastronomy/Food Tourism 5 3.2 Impacts of Gastronomy/Food Tourism 5 4.0 Culture in Gastronomy Tourism 6 5.0 Conclusion 7 6.0 References 9 1.0 Introduction Gastronomy has become and continues to be a vital attribute in the growth and development of travel and destination visitations. This evidences that there is a connection, if not a direct relationship, between gastronomy and tourism. Gastronomy, also known as food tourism, tasting tourism or culinary tourism, relates to the enjoyment of excellent food through reflective eating and preparation of that food. In the perspective of Gastronomic Studies, gastronomy tourism is about the cultural aspects of food preparation. It provides an arena where the sciences of humanity and society exhibit fundamental features to the tourists. Relative to this, gastronomy contributes to the continued globalization of the world. Apart from business transactions and international trade, gastronomy also facilitates interaction of cultures and societies at a global level. Discussion of the subject is, therefore, deemed important because it increases the quality of experience for tourists visiting a given destination and it may also enhance the return of these tourists to this destination to resample its gastronomy. With this kind of basis, researches, studies and reports like such help in establishing the construct validity of advocacies and motivation for people to travel for gastronomy. 2.0 Gastronomy 2.1 Food Trail In a general sense, one would perceive comprehensively by looking at gastronomy as chronological composition of food and culture to the elementary subsets. Evolution of societies and transformation of communities are exhibited by other factors but food and culture remain to hold the core values, beliefs, norms, attributes and views of a people. However, putting a food trail on a particular destination for tourism reveals that the cultural composition of food does not really change but the style of preparation is varied depending on intended and potential market excursion. Resultantly, many governments have implemented policies to transform and promote their countries as dominant food hubs because of the potential gastronomy tourism (Boyne et al. 2003). Food trail also enhances an understanding of the levels to which these policies are effective and how much they have achieved. Interestingly, food trail can only be carried out, and can only lead to viable results when undertaken, by an outsider to the region under study. 2.2 Market Excursion The understanding of expeditions of and journeys to regions whose tourism potentials have been strengthened by food tourism is a subset of the contemporary and emerging gastronomy studies. The element of culture in food variation from one destination to another forms the basis for Brillat-Savarin’s ideas of a postmodern framework where gastronomy shares in the orientation of cultural celebrations and studies. Therefore, market excursion brings the understanding that cultural studies that are related to food make subject out the food producers (who comprise of famers as well), cooks and other professionals too. It widens thoughts about this as an individual gets to understand that all these personalities are involved in the conception, research, collection, preparation, promotion and presentation of consumable food. But then again, as Scarpato (2000) postulates, market excursion reveals how small subset cultural groupings in a society remain resistant to any forms of dominance. In his arguments, Scarpato (2000) use the premises that gastronomy studies encompass all of culture in relation to food by restoring identity to gastronomic entities. It is like setting an arena for tourism in a completely different style and giving voice to the discourse-oppressed elements of tourism. This proves that tourism is yet to be completely discovered and exploited. It is for this reason that gastronomy advocates for more innovations on food tourism. It owes to the mere description that tourism is a composition of activities of people travelling to and staying in places outside their usual for a period that is less than one consecutive year. The reasons for visiting and staying at a place vary and can be for leisure, business and any other purposes. 2.3 Gastronomic Experiences An excellent gastronomic experience was obtained at Apsleys, The Lanesborough Hotel where a 5 course menu with wine was tried. Each dish had a positively impacting surprise for the visitors. Generally the food is of high quality, complemented by the impressive way in which it is prepared with some fabulous mixtures. Expectedly, the service is professional, friendly and keeps a formal relationship with visitors. The only notable limitation is the short time period between any two dishes. The 5 course is served a little bit too rapidly and even though it creates some uneasiness, interestingly, it does not affect the quality of the food. 3.0 Gastronomy and Tourism The main idea in all these revolves around tourists making trips to destinations as they are motivated by the local foods and beverages of that region. It is actually the uniqueness of a cuisine that makes eating and drinking events in a region memorable. This activity has attracted global attention and is an international affair. Artistically, it makes use an already set pitch globalization to prove its own potential of facilitating the globalization itself. Just to set perspective on the varied levels of tourism, gastronomy tourism can be compared to sports tourism especially back riding which starting to set base internationally as a tourism factor. Just like sports tourism, the most evident impact that culinary tourism is expected to or has already had is the increasing level of tourism that it brings to the hosting country or region. According to the Commonwealth of Australia (2000) sport tourism has social, economic and cultural aspects, which are the very fundamentals of culinary tourism. 3.1 Prevalence of Gastronomy/Food Tourism Tourism, as whole and in general perception, has acquired and set for itself an undeniable space of importance across particular sectors of the society. Therefore, the prevalence of gastronomy and food tourism has only proved the diversification of tourism itself. In almost the same velocity, gastronomy tourism has also had an irrefutable importance for food lovers and holiday makers. Culinary tourism has, thus, been accorded much potential in recent times as an economically viable section of tourism. Food and drinks are elements that all other forms of tourism cannot do without and this is why the speed of growth of gastronomy tourism almost matches that of tourisms as a whole. It is, subsequently, crucial that a region attracting tourists by other ways maintain quality of the food that the tourists are treated with. The quality of food then becomes the differentiating or distinguishing element for any two countries with the same tourist attraction feature. This indicates that the prevalence of culinary tourism is fuelled by its necessity first then other drivers come after (Robinson et al. 2011). 3.2 Impacts of Gastronomy/Food Tourism Celebration of food variations, through reflective eating and drinking, then becomes a unique product of a specific region rather than being a product of tourism advancements. With its development, food tourism has the main goal and primary aim of improving gastronomic lives of respective communities. According to Boyne, Hall and Williams (2003), this is achieved through appreciation of and ensuring environmental and social sustainability. Social sustainability herein refers to revering the social or cultural element of the food and ensuring that it remains evident in the content of food and style of preparation. Gastronomy tourism is still an emerging and growing section of tourism with different cities trying to emerge as gastronomic destinations. It can then be said that the prevalence of gastronomic tourism has awakened an internally and externally propelled motivation for cities to pivot food tourism. Resultantly, everyone is eager to display to the rest of the world what their land produces and how much quality they can accord to their foods (Sims, 2009). Based on the idea that food type and quality only exists by cultural acceptance from local communities, gastronomy can be and has been used in destination marketing. In this perspective, it becomes a tool for determining certain characteristics of a given market for the products and services of another entity (Londoño, 2011). Povey (2011) brings a totally different yet essential bearing to this discussion by introducing the element of edibility of the food and level of consumption by the tourists for whom the food is intended. Just because the tourists come in to enjoy the food prepared and availed does not mean that they all will enjoy the cuisine. They come as tourists to experience foreign culture through the food prepared but then, they also have their cultural ways, norms and beliefs. Relative to this, some of the tourists may find the food inedible or find some aspects of the cuisine offensive to them and their cultural backgrounds. It is important for the host to identify recreational and experimental tourists and know how to handle them. Identification of such and other groups of the same is important because they have different preferences with the gastronomic loop. 4.0 Culture in Gastronomy Tourism In the above discussion, there has been much mention of culture and social norms as they are predisposed in the views of tourists doing the reflective eating and drinking of food from a given region. This makes culture an elementary and imperative factor of not only gastronomy but tourism as a whole. Nevertheless, it is important to put a clear cut difference between elementary and contemporary culture by considering the essential domains of human life. Such domains are inclusive of religious background, interpersonal relations and social values. A structuralism’s analysis would study culture as a variable of behaviors and an object of the society just as gastronomy. However, behind that is a theory that views culture as a language system that makes the meanings systematized around the relationship aspects. It is this language it the prepared cuisine through which a society communicates to the rest of the world who are the tourists. In order to understand the contemporary points of culture, things have to make sociological sense, and in addition to that understanding, one gets to link cultural issues to social forces. A contemporary approach introduces one of the post-cultural, postmodern and postcolonial accounts. It could seem to be in a different and almost like redefining culture, but that is just the contemporary nature. A symbol of post colonialism is the recognition of labour as the presence of humanity at the work place, be it professional or not. This ensures a reward for that presence. The presence of humans is not of the abstract nature, like homoelectrus in engineering or homoeconomicus in the business world, but an assembly of interactions between persons (During, 2005). 5.0 Conclusion Evident from the discussion above is the aspect that general tourism has continued to grow in different measures. The report achieves the objective of establishing that tourism is made up of sections that operate virtually independently to collectively produce characterization of tourism. More importantly, the discussion achieves the objective of analyzing gastronomy tourism as a contemporary feature of modern tourism. The report establishes that even though the world is coming to a realization of the potential in culinary tourism, it has been in existence as much as tourism, in an ambiguous sense, has been. This is based on the fact ascertained by the report that the other forms, if not sections, of tourism all depend on food quality and attractive cuisines for their thriving. It is from this that different cities have seen and aim at exploring the potential in culinary tourism. In addition, the discussion includes the element of acceptance of the cuisines by the visiting tourists. This is because the tourists also have their own cultures and so the prepared foods may be inedible or even offensive to some of them. The report also leads to the realization that culture is a core element of gastronomy, especially when it comes to tourism. There are elementary and contemporary contexts of culture as explained by various theories but commonly they hold that culture defines the appropriate language through which humanity speaks. It is this language that gastronomy and gastronomic tourism employs to enhance cultural globalization of the world. 6.0 References Boyne, S. Hall, D. and Williams, F. 2003. Policy, Support and Promotion for Food-Related Tourism Initiatives: A Marketing Approach to Regional Development. In: M. Hall, Wine, Food and Tourism Marketing. Binghampton: The Haworth Hospitality Press. Scarpato, R. 2000. New Global Cuisine: The perspective of postmodern gastronomy studies. Melbourne: RMIT University. Commonwealth of Australia. 2000. Towards a National Sports Tourism Strategy [online] Available at: http://www.ausport.gov.au [Accessed 23 October 2013]. Robinson, P., Heitmann, S., and Dieke, P. 2011. Research Themes for Tourism. Oxfordshire: CABI International. During, S. 2005. Genres and Genealogies in Cultural Studies: A critical introduction. Milton Park: Routledge. Londoño, M. P. 2011. Gastronomy Tourism: An opportunity for local development in Catalonia? A stakeholder analysis. Barcelona: University of Barcelona. Sims, R. 2009. Food, place and authenticity: local food and the sustainable tourism experience. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 17 (3), 321-336. Read More