Stewed Chicken and Long-Nosed Kings: Tasting Troubled Plenty

ABSTRACT This ethnographic article examines conditions of material plenty in post-reform China from the perspective of staff and suppliers at a farm-to-table restaurant in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. From data gathered during mealtime conversations and through everyday reflections on food and flavor, I piece together an historical hypothesis about changing times and tastes in Hangzhou. I find that food talk embodies and reflects my interlocutors’ analysis of a state-superintended post-reform social order, which is undergoing a crisis of “familiarity.” I argue that the sensory qualities of food afford unique access to past experiences in the present, making food a crucial site of political consciousness and critique.