‘Sauce in the Bowl, not on your Shirt’

Abstract

In this chapter, we draw on studies of taste education and food aesthetics, and from our participant-observation to analyse an ethnic food tour led by two Vietnamese Australian tour guides to Cabramatta, Sydney. We argue that the guides teach tour participants a spectrum of aesthetic appreciation for Vietnamese food including gastronomic sensory registers, practical, embodied and etiquette aesthetics. By discussing this range of aesthetic forms including their focus on our bodies, we extend the studies on taste education by Isabelle De Solier, Ken MacDonald, and Krishnendu Ray to show the complexity, skill and taste in the food pedagogy work of the tour guides. More specifically, we build on Ray’s body of work on racially minoritised restaurateurs’ ‘design work’ and his argument that their aesthetic work shapes the taste of dominant groups.