ABSTRACT
Food and travelling are intertwined in various ways. Thomas Cook, the originator of modern tourism, declared that travel ‘provides food for the mind’ (cited in Brendon 1991, 31). It also provides food for the body. One of the ways travellers ‘consume’ the places they visit is by literally ingesting the foods available in those places (see Urry 1995 and in this volume on ‘consuming places’). Food consumption recurs as a key theme in travel narratives, both in terms of tasting the ‘other’ and experiencing other cultures through food, and also in terms of eating familiar foods that signify home to the traveller. It is on this second aspect of food consumption that this chapter focuses. Drawing on narratives that travellers publish on-line while they travel around the world, this chapter considers the way travellers describe their patronage of globally franchised restaurants such as McDonald’s.
