2.1 Introduction: Defining Gastronomy and Gastronomic Tourism
There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.
—M. F. K. Fisher
Gastronomy began to develop as a distinct sector of the broader tourism industry in the 1990s and remains an ongoing field of study and practice. It enhances our capacity to derive pleasure from eating and to connect with the regions, the people, and the cultures from which our meals are sourced. Gastronomic knowledge derives from an educated appreciation of food and of the sensual pleasures it provides. The pleasures of gastronomy also include the social bonds that are formed when dining together, also known as commensality. The term gastronomy was officially adopted into the French language in 1835. The primary goals of gastronomy involve the pursuit of sensory pleasures, intellectual stimulation, cultural engagement, and social well-being through the act of eating. Gastronomy, in other words, engages both the body and the mind in what remains an inherently social experience. The physical and social pleasures of gastronomy are intertwined with and enhanced by knowledge of food and its importance to a given culture, its historical origins, the nuances of its flavors, the method of its preparation, and the context of its consumption, each of which plays a part in its cultural heritage. Gastronomy, or the art of eating, first developed as a field in 19th-century France. Not surprisingly, the founding fathers of food criticism and of gastronomic tourism were French. Whereas food criticism dates back to 1803 and the first modern gastronomic tourists traveled by automobile in the 1920s, not until the 21st-century would the United Nations World Tourism Organization officially designate gastronomy as a unique sector of the tourist industry.
Historically, France has led the West as a culinary beacon, becoming the first nation to export its cuisine and to teach its culinary techniques abroad. So it seems fitting that it would serve as a leader in developing gastronomy into a vibrant sector of the tourism experience. Beginning in the 1990s, the French tourist industry began to consciously connect its identity as a gastronomic region with its cultural heritage. Additional European nations followed suit more broadly. Although France led the way in the late 20th century, it would take yet another two decades for the tourist industry to embrace gastronomy as a fast-growing and lucrative sector.
Although figures are widely variable, one report released in 2024 estimates the industry generated 11.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2023 (Grand View Research, 2024). Since 2010 increasing interest in food and drink as a reason to travel or as an important role in tourist itineraries has led to the rise of local gastronomy tours, food festivals, cooking classes, food trails, and place-branding through local food and drink. In turn, place-branding has transformed some destinations into what folklorist Pauline Adema describes as a foodscape. In her study Garlic Capital of the World: Gilroy, Garlic, and the Making of a Festive Foodscape, Adema explains: “When the association between a place and a food item is abstracted, highlighted, and promoted, the communal landscape becomes a foodscape” (2009, p. 4). Like France did in the 1990s, other nations, cities, regions, and rural areas have begun creating foodscapes to draw visitors, providing pleasurable educational experiences and crafting unique gastronomic identities for themselves. The World Tourism Organization (WTO) defines gastronomic tourism as
based on a concept of knowing and learning, eating, tasting and enjoying the gastronomic culture that is identified with a territory. It is not possible to talk of gastronomic tourism without also talking about the culinary identity of the terroir as a distinguishing feature. The territory is the backbone of gastronomy because a destination’s landscapes, culture, products, techniques and dishes define its culinary identity. (WTO & Basque Culinary Center, 2019, pp. 8–9)
Whereas the territory defines the gastronomic destination, determining what grows well in a given region, gastronomic tourists who travel to experience a region’s foodscape tend to value “experiences that stress learning, creativity and mastery, aesthetic appreciation, and cultural authenticity and celebration” (Getz & Robinson, 2019, p. 150). In turn the notion of terroir encapsulates the relationship between land and the edible products that it nurtures—whether it be fruit, vegetable, fungi, a free-range bird, or a grazing animal and its milk. The term terroir was first developed in France to designate the taste of place embodied in wine. The terroir of an edible product includes the soil, topography, climate, and biodiversity contained in the select portion of land on which it is grown, all of which influences its flavor and taste. It also includes the cultural practices that determine the flavor profile of a regional product. For example, the taste of Roquefort cheese is imparted by Penicillium roqueforti, which thrives in the caves where the cheese is aged. The term has been adopted by many food growers and has come to represent the unique place-based flavors that characterize a region and its food products.
Gastronomy Entails
- An appreciation of food and dining
- Curiosity and knowledge about a food’s cultural heritage
- An appreciation of a food’s relationship to its geographical and cultural environment, or terroir
- Study of and experience with the sensory pleasures derived from eating
- An appreciation of the social bonds formed when dining together, also known as commensality
- Reverence for food’s capacity to nourish our intellectual, physical, and social well-being
Regardless of where travelers journey, food and drink sit firmly in the realm of hospitality. Dining itself involves a complex web of social, cultural, and economic practices and constitutes a form of symbolic communication and sensory engagement, one in which a culture’s culinary traditions are literally consumed by the diner. In turn the study of gastronomic tourism as an industry has led to the development of two main modes of investigation—namely those that analyze marketing and management and those that analyze culture and sociology. Although in-depth studies such as Adema’s interweave both approaches, those focused solely on marketing and management explore the motivations that drive tourists to seek out local food, drink, and food products. This focus also measures tourist satisfaction in relation to a destination’s gastronomic identity and culinary offerings. Cultural and sociological research, in contrast, focuses on gastronomy as a means of learning about a society, its culture, its cultural identity, and its history (Dixit, 2019b).
As gastronomic tourism has developed into a unique sector of the tourism industry, it has expanded from a service provided to a traveler into an intentionally curated experience. The unique sector has come to be defined as
an experiential trip to a gastronomic region, for recreational or entertainment purposes, which includes visits to primary and secondary producers of food, gastronomic festivals, food fairs, events, farmers’ markets, cooking shows and demonstrations, tastings of quality food products, or any tourism activity related to food. (Dixit summarizing Hall and Sharples, 2019a, p. 13).
More broadly, gastronomy improves destination appeal and educates tourists about a location’s cultural heritage, helping to draw more visitors and improving their experience. It also strengthens a community’s or region’s identity and stimulates tourist spending in other sectors. Gastronomy can serve as a tourist attraction, as a part of the tourist product, as an experience, and as a cultural phenomenon. It also “helps to promote sustainable tourism through preserving valuable cultural heritage, empowering and nurturing pride amongst communities, and enhancing intercultural understanding” (Dixit, 2019a, p. 15). A region’s agriculture and culture are intertwined with its gastronomy. Tourism, in turn, provides the infrastructure and services needed to package gastronomy as a travel product or experience.
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Key Takeaway: The steady growth forecast for gastronomic tourism provides ample opportunity for destinations to develop and maintain appealing foodscapes through place-branding. Destinations create foodscapes when stakeholders within a given region collaborate in harnessing and promoting their unique terroir—the cultural and geographic factors that contribute to “taste of place.”
Significance to Gastronomic Tourism: Place-making through the creation of a foodscape enables a region to showcase and preserve its culinary heritage as well as its agricultural and culinary practices. It has the added benefit of promoting social cohesion and economic well-being.
Significance to Tourism: Increasing numbers of tourists are traveling specifically to participate in, learn about, and enjoy a destination’s foodscape and culinary heritage, making gastronomic tourism one of the fastest growing sectors of the tourism industry.
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Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of mass tourism and the desire for more sustainable and culturally engaged travel had spurred travelers to begin seeking unique destinations and activities. During the pandemic, travelers actively sought off-the-beaten path, sparsely populated areas to vacation or to work “from home.” After pandemic restrictions were lifted, communities, cities, regions, and, even, nations began to seek the return of tourists and also worked to meet travelers’ increasing desire for sustainable, culturally engaged, and educational experiences. Because of its ability to showcase the cultural heritage of a place and to connect visitors with locals, gastronomic tourism has become one of the fastest-rising sectors of the tourist industry. The deliberate creation or enhancement of a region’s identity through gastronomy has enabled many cities and regions to emerge from the economic downtown caused by the pandemic. As Adema explains, the intentional transformation of a city or designated region into a “foodscape is often one strategy of place making employed to generate a collective place-specific identity or a sense of place. By differentiating a city [region, or community] from others, image makers intend not only to boost pride among locals but to attract visitors—i.e., economic capital—to the locale” (2009, p. 8). This tactic has helped many areas recuperate after the pandemic, revitalizing national, regional, and local economies.
Defining Terms
Although used interchangeably by some, the terms gastronomic, food, and culinary tourism should be understood as variable. Throughout this chapter, gastronomic tourism has been used as an umbrella term for food-engaged tourism—a term that denotes both travels intentionally planned for food adventures and travels that are booked for non-food-oriented reasons but that lead to intensive food-engagement once the tourist has landed at the destination.
Gastronomic Tourism: The preferred term among individuals who speak Latin-based languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Romanian (Wolf, 2019). This term has been used throughout this chapter, as it relies heavily on the 60 essays collected in the Routledge Handbook of Gastronomic Tourism, which were authored by over 100 scholars from around the world. Using the term also pays homage to France as the origin of modern gastronomic writing and gastronomic tourism.
Food Tourism: This broader umbrella term was adopted by the World Food Travel Association and has become common among tourism industry professionals. In her study of sustainable gastronomic supply chains, scholar Jane Eastham suggests that the umbrella term food tourism has risen to prominence because it refers both to the gastronomic tourist, who she defines as a person intentionally traveling in search of food-centered adventures, and to the tourist who becomes readily engaged in a destination’s food offerings only after they have arrived at a given destination. In other words, Eastham categorizes the terms according to the traveler’s motivations, with gastronomic tourists being the most seriously engaged with a destination’s food culture and heritage.
Culinary Tourism: This term was coined by the folklorist Lucy Long in a 1998 essay, “‘Culinary tourism’: A folklorist perspective on eating and otherness,” to denote the use of food and food-centered activities to explore and learn about other cultures and cultural histories. Some scholars use the term culinary tourism in order to describe activities that deal with cooking (as opposed to eating), such as cooking classes and workshops. Culinary is also used as a precise literary designation among scholars to denote writing that focuses on cooking, such as cookbooks.
| Tourism Type | Definition | Used By | Tourist Intention |
| Gastronomic Tourism | Tourism driven by the wish to explore a region’s food culture and food heritage | Predominant term in Latin-derived languages—namely, Spanish, French Italian, Portuguese, Romanian | To learn about, engage with, and experience a region’s food heritage and food culture |
| Culinary Tourism | Coined by folklorist Lucy Long to denote the intentional exploration of a culture through its food
Used to refer to cooking-based activities such as cooking classes and workshops. Also used to describe writing focused on cooking, as in culinary literature |
Scholars and individuals wishing to differentiate an activity or a genre of writing that focuses specifically on cooking | To learn about a culture and cultural traditions through the act of cooking |
| Food Tourism | Umbrella term that applies to all forms of food-centered tourism, both intentional and unintentional | Most people in the tourism industry | Covers the gamut of intentions, from dining at a restaurant to sate hunger to the intentional curation of an entire trip around exploring a destination’s food and beverage |
Terroir and Protected Designation of Origin
Derived from the word earth, or terra, terroir was first coined as a term in French winemaking to designate what might be described as “taste of place.” It has since been adopted (and sometimes misused) by the food and beverage industry to refer to the distinctive flavors imparted to food and food products by the place in which they are made. Terroir not only includes the physical environment in which a food is grown or prepared but also the cultural practices that determine its production. For example, Roquefort cheese, which is made in Roquefort, France, is derived from sheep’s milk and must be aged in the Combalou caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. Penicillium roqueforti, which lends Roquefort its unique flavor, thrive in these caves, imparting the aged cheese with a distinctive “taste of place.” Europe created the protected designation of origin (PDO) to provide legal protections for the name of foods such as Roquefort and Parmesan Reggiano, which can only be made and produced in a specific geographical region that imparts special characteristics. For example, a blue cheese not aged in the Combalou caves of Roqufort-sur-Soulzon cannot legally be called a true Roquefort cheese. This protection can only be applied to products with characteristics that derive from the geographic environment in which they were developed and produced.
Attributions
The art of eating and the pleasures derived from dining, which involve commensality (dining together) as much as enjoyment of the dishes and beverages served and the composition of the menu. The primary goals of gastronomy involve the pursuit of sensory pleasures, intellectual stimulation, cultural engagement, and social well-being through the act of eating. The pleasures of gastronomy derive, in large part, from knowledge of a food’s importance to a given culture, its historical origins, the nuances of its flavors, the method of its preparation, and the context of its consumption, each of which plays a part in its cultural heritage.
Used to designate the type of travel driven by a destination’s food and beverage. It may involve taking food tours, journeying along food trails, participating in educational tastings and seminars, dining at restaurants and cafés, taking cooking classes or workshops, foraging, or visiting, staying, or dining at wineries or farms.
The term denotes the intentional creation of a destination identity in relation to its food or beverage. Developing a region into a successful gastronomic destination involves place-branding, promotion, and, ideally, community involvement, all of which transform it into a welcoming foodscape that draws visitors.
The term denotes the relationship between land and the edible products that it nurtures—whether it be fruit, vegetable, fungi, a free-range bird, or a grazing animal and its milk. The term terroir was first developed in France to designate the taste of place embodied in wine. The terroir of an edible product includes the soil, topography, climate, and biodiversity contained in a select portion of land, all of which influences its flavor and taste. It also includes the cultural practices that determine the flavor profile of a regional product.
Europe created the protected designation of origin (PDO) to provide legal protections for the name of foods such as Roquefort and Parmesan Reggiano, which can only be made and produced in a specific geographical region that imparts special characteristics. For example, a blue cheese not aged in the Camalou caves of Roquefort-sur Soulzon cannot legally be called a true Roquefort cheese. This protection can only be applied to products with characteristics that derive from the geographic environment in which they were developed and produced.
