ABSTRACT
This chapter unpacks the middle class arguments surrounding one particular informal practice, food vendors in public spaces, wherein their recent aestheticised reasoning of order and cleanliness is framed by an emphasis on hygiene and health. Examining middle class attitudes to informal food vendors in Chennai's beaches, this chapter illustrates the ambiguous role of the middle class as consumers, while simultaneously revealing that the formal food retail establishments on the beach patronised by the middle class are equally rooted in several aspects of informality. The chapter presents recent portrayals of informal trading practices as a visual deterrent highlight a changing perspective of public spaces in Indian cities. It dissects the middle class position objecting to informal food practices in Chennai's beaches as they embark on a bourgeois re-imagination of the city's public spaces, arguments that are challenged by the accompanying ethnographic analysis.
