The Role of Ethnic Restaurants in Food System Changes: A Case Study in the Netherlands

Description

If we want to live in accordance with planetary boundaries, lifestyles in affluent societies such as the Netherlands must be different in the future. Wealthy lifestyles are characterised by an abundance of choice, convenience, and comfort. Over the past decades, the diversity of consumed food in the Netherlands has rapidly increased. At the same time, eating out has become a cultural norm and the cuisines offered in restaurants are more and more diverse. Other than eating more and more out of home, Dutch consumers are increasingly buying convenience products for eating at home, with these convenience products representing a diversity in cuisines as well. Taking convenience products as a proxy for cultural diversity of everyday consumption in affluent lifestyles, this paper offers a restaurant perspective to explore the mobility of cuisines and their emergence in the Dutch food consumption context. We explore the hypothesis that culinary diversity in restaurants trickles down to culinary diversity in at-home food consumption. We will follow a qualitative approach to present an in-depth restaurant perspective on diversity in food consumption and how it has changed over time. Meanings, materials and competences related to certain cuisines and dishes will be traced from restaurant to household settings. The aim is to explore the spatial and temporal mobility of cuisines in terms of global to local adaptation and how this transforms them. To do so, semi-structured interviews with restaurant-owners and chefs will be held. We are in the first stages of data collection and will present preliminary results from these interviews.

Period	10 Apr 2025
Event title	SCORAI Europe Conference 2025: Mainstreaming Sustainable Consumption
Event type	Conference/symposium
Location	Lund, SwedenShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International