Eating a Meal with the Other
101
Bourdain’s Indigenous Tourism
Over the course of an average show, Bourdain narrates a selected history of
the location, visits a local market, and is given a culinary tour of the city through
the assistance of one or two natives. The tour usually includes a home-cooked
meal with a family, a sampling of street food, and an education in the regionally
produced alcohol, rarely venturing into upscale venues. This type of tourism is
known as “indigenous tourism,” since Bourdain is travelling to a remote location
that is not easily accessible to the average tourist and contacting indigenous
peoples and their culture (M.K. Smith). While this type of tourism is growing in
popularity, it is Bourdain’s encounters with host families and locals, as well as
his narration of the country’s culture that may be seen as problematic.
Patai offers an important foundation for examining these problems in her
essay, “U.S. Academics and Third World Women: Is Ethical Research
Possible?” Patai’s ethical dilemma of researching third-world women can offer a
critical framework for analyzing travel shows like No Reservations, which offer
an everyday media representation of a very similar act. In her essay, Patai
worries that white, middle-class academic researchers who choose poor,
nonwhite individuals as their research subjects are participating in a system
troubled by steep inequalities that cannot be overcome. Patai argues:
In addition to the characteristics of race and class, the
existential or psychological dilemmas of the split between
subject and object. . . imply that objectification, the utilization
of others for one’s own purposes. . . and the possibility of
exploitation, are built into almost all research projects with
living human beings. (Patai 139)
These problematic constraints are similarly present in the case of the travel
food show, where the individuals from the country being profiled are necessarily
objectified and possibly exploited for the creation of an appealing program. The
format of a travel show is such that a crew of American technicians descends on
a foreign locale, where they develop contacts with local informants who can act
as tour guides for the short period of the filming. The individuals who serve in
these roles have little to no say in how they are represented, and are simply used
for their cultural knowledge. As Smith finds is often the case in indigenous
tourism, “the local populations are usually immobile both physically and
financially, at least in touristic terms; therefore their role will never be more than
that of serving tourists” (M.K. Smith 172).
These problems with travel shows are particularly marked in the case of
travel food shows like No Reservations, which consistently operate under the
assumption that other cultures are exotic and exciting because their food is so
different. Long defines culinary tourism as “the intentional, exploratory
participation in the foodways of an Other, participation including the
consumption . . . of a food item, cuisine, meal system, or eating style considered