Feeding a tourism boom: changing food practices and systems of provision in Hoi An, Vietnam

ABSTRACT

While food studies have increasingly gone beyond the “Western” experience in food globalization processes, research on food and tourism has often prioritized the (Western) tourist’s gaze. In the literature on food and tourism in Asia, little attention has been given to the experiences of host populations. Responding to this lacuna in the literature, this paper analyses how a tourism boom is fed and how tourism-driven “foodway encounters” shape food practices and systems of provision. Focusing on the major tourism transformations seen in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hoi An, Vietnam, over the past decades, we study how hosts approach tourists’ demand for both comfort food from home and new food experiences that are simultaneously “authentic” and safe. We analyze how both Vietnamese and foreign hosts seek to understand, influence and adapt to the culinary preferences of visitors, and how they develop the necessary skills to do so. Furthermore, since feeding tourists often requires a wide range of food traditionally unavailable or uncommon in Hoi An, we analyze how hosts acquire the ingredients necessary for changing food practices and how systems of provision both shape and take shape through the process of catering to the particularities of touristy foodways.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism
• food practices
• foodways
• Hoi An
• Vietnam

Acknowledgement

We would like to than all the interviewees for their time and for sharing their insights with us. We would furthermore like to thank the anonymous reviewers, participants at the Geographies of food tourism panel at the 2021 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, participants at the Risk Governance and Sustainable Urban Development conference in Hanoi 2021 and members of Centre for Development and the Environment’s research group Sustainable consumption and energy equity for constructive feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The two terms, quán ăn and nhà hàng can sometimes be used interchangeably in daily Vietnamese conversations. However, nhà hàng (restaurants) normally refers to larger and more formal dining establishments that offer more diverse menus. Quán ăn (eateries), on the other hand, are usually smaller, more affordable, family-run establishments. Unlike mobile food stalls (gánh hàng rong), a quán ăn often has a fixed location, with tables and chairs for customer to sit down for their meals. However, due to its limited scale of operations, a family-run quán ăn often serves fewer dishes, sometimes only one or two main dishes (e.g.: a quán phở or quán cao lầu only serves the noodle dishes). As informed by our interviewees, we used the terms, nhà hàng and quán ăn in our paper to further highlight the transformations and changes to the food scene of Hoi An as rising demand and influences from tourists require small eateries to provide more “professional and formal” dining experience in line with a nhà hàng.

2. Bánh mì literally means bread and can come in different shapes, but the name is now often associated with Vietnamese-style baguettes.

3. In contrast, other parts of the broad food literature, such as food regimes, have had a strong focus on particular commodities (e.g., Jakobsen and Hansen 2020; Wang 2018).