ABSTRACT
Food, with its primal connotations of nurturance and sustenance, carries powerful psychological, economic, physiological and political meanings. It is also a significant marker of ethnicity (Tremayne 1993) and migrants are frequently very resistant to dietary change. In fact, the maintenance of food habits may serve as a cohesive and stabilising force in a potentially threatening environment (Harbottle 1995: 27-9). The sharing of a food culture is a basis of collective identity and commensality and also a means of expressing both inclusion and otherness (Fischler 1988). For Iranians particularly, the provision of food is a key signifier of acceptance, hospitality and friendship.
