Border food and food on the border

Meaning and practice in Mexican haute cuisine

Bibliographic Data

ID3977290
AuthorsMonica A Walker (0000-0002-9006-1100, University of Louisville, corresponding author), Margath A Walker
Year2013
Volume14
Issue6
Pages649-667
Publication date2013-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2013.800223
OpenAlexW2003038340
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited42

Restaurants and their attendant practices are high-profile sites at which regional and national cuisines are experienced, experimented with, and negotiated. In particular, they are important settings for the consumption and production of national identity—a crucial space through which to understand the coalescing of the material and representational. This article focuses specifically on the production side of the pairing through an examination of restaurants that are part of a prominent culinary movement (alta cocina mexicana) in the Mexican border town of Tijuana. The central argument of the paper is that Tijuana's culinary scene is indicative of the reassertion of boundaries between Mexico and the USA through the intentional rejection of northern stereotypes of Mexican food. The emphasis on traditional Mexican cuisine, rather than an internationally hybrid cosmopolitan approach, suggests that chefs are adhering to a set of rules that reflect Mexicanness. Restaurants propagating alta cocina mexicana work to differentiate the border and act as social devices which both complicate conventional understandings of Mexican food and disrupt hegemonic discourses of the border as productive of hybridity

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Art · Consumption (sociology · Hegemony · Hybridity · Identity (music · Locality · Meaning (existential · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Work (physics · Anthropology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Engineering · Food, Nutrition, and Cultural Practices · Gender Studies · Law · Medicine · Philippine History and Culture · Psychology

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