Crossing Culinary Boundaries in a Mountain Foodscape: Dish-Level Food-Choice Repertoires among Tourists in Himachal Pradesh

Abstract

Local food has been researched in literature frequently with general concepts such as satisfaction, authenticity, local image and loyalty. This was helpful but it didn't address the simpler question: what food tourists ate when they visited a place. This study has proposed a dish-level approach to tourist food behaviour and the concept of culinary boundary crossing, which implied the tourists' shift from familiar or recognizable foods to more place-specific, culturally embedded, ingredient-distinctive and sensory-risk oriented foods. The paper focused on Himachal Pradesh, and analysed the tourists' reported consumption of particular Himachali and regional food items to identify food-choice repertoires and classify tourists on the basis of their level of involvement with the mountain foodscape. The findings revealed that the tourists reacted to Himachali cuisine in unbalanced manner; some stayed limited to familiar or limited food items while others extended their food choices and tastes to local foods in a broader and deeper range. The study employed a food-tourism research approach adding a fresh perspective to the research about food evaluation, putting the emphasis not on the food as a whole, but on the food at the dish level. It also provided hands-on knowledge in the preparation of food trails, regional tasting menus, food interpretation for the tourist at the destination and culinary experiences, which pushed the tourist from familiar foods to the deeper aspects of the Himachali food culture.