ABSTRACT
Practices of exploratory eating of ethnic food offer opportunities to encounter, know, enjoy and consume other cultures. In other words, they are a combination of ethnic dining and entertainment or cultural “eatertainment,” defined as an entertaining experience of “eaters” (Ritzer, 1999). In a similar vein, Mkono (2011) describes ethnic “eatertainment” as a leisure experience that mingles entertainment with ethnic food and beverage offerings. Several studies have emphasized the need to identify the way ethnic food offerings in restaurants offer an “othered” experience and the manner in which this experience is received or perceived by the restaurant patrons (Cook, Crang, & Thorpe, 2004). “Othered”
Deepak Chhabra, Woojin Lee and Shengnan Zhao
can be defined as something unique and differentiating to an ethnic culture (Lu & Fine, 1995; Mkono, 2011). The degree of otherness can be considered synonymous with the degree of an objectively authentic experience offered in ethnic restaurants (Lu & Fine, 1995; Robinson & Clifford, 2012; Sims, 2009). In other words, the more “othered” the food offerings are, the more objectively authentic the overall experience is.
