My dissertation, “Beyond the Plate: Culinary Violence and the Oaxacan Chef,” introduces the theoretical framework of culinary violence to examine how chefs navigate the limitations placed on them and their food. Culinary violence is not a physical act, but frames the strategies chefs use to respond to consumer expectations, meet their goals, and cook heritage foods. Chefs, I argue, engage with food as a genre of listening where they navigate meaning by attending to diners’ expectations that dining out is a predictable social experience (Marsilli-Vargas 2022; Pløger 2022). Chefs respond to praise, feedback, and other subtle cues diners have formed based on prior experiences and outside representations of the cuisine they are eating.

Page 99 of my dissertation is a key example from an interview I completed in Columbus, Ohio. Chef Esme, who runs a food hall stand with her family, crafts new dishes to meet outside expectations:

She said, “American diners, when they have a meal, even a taco, they have to have a side.” She has met this local expectation by adding not only chips and pico de gallo to her menu, but also “queso, which is not a thing in Oaxaca… we added it because, during winter, people don’t buy our guacamole or pico de gallo. That’s why we added queso, to help with the sales…. people still have to have their side.”

Chef Esme can be said to have been ‘listening’ for a cue, as she knows that diners want a side. Featuring a hot, savory one for the winter months is a savvy, pragmatic business decision.

Culinary violence may appear to only tighten the confines of Oaxacan food, but Chef Esme has the agency to reframe and recontextualize even known foods like this queso, which she makes “completely from scratch… we add in cut-up blocks of cheese. We make a roasted Oaxacan salsa to go in it; we add in chiles, serranos, jalapeños, dry guajilloes, and garlic.” Oaxacan queso is something new yet instantly recognizable to diners in Ohio; by infusing Oaxacan ingredients into a familiar dish, Chef Esme has listened to her diners, but still pushes forward a reimagined version of this dish that suits her desire to prepare foods that utilize heritage flavors.

            Though Oaxacan chefs face constraints on their cuisine from outside ideas about the flavor and composition of their food, they have the agency to introduce, innovate, and transform their food. As I conclude on page 99, Chef Esme’s “expertise, and ability to counter culinary violence, is [paradoxically] most visible when she alters her Oaxacan food from its original form to meet diners’ tastes.” She has contributed to the performative nature of dining out that customers use to enact their goals and identity, and has done so by listening for consumer desires, as she maintains her business and cooks food she is proud to call her own.

Bibliography

Marsilli-Vargas, Xochitl. Genres of Listening: An Ethnography of Psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022.

Pløger, John. “Dining out as a Performative Event.” Urban Research & Practice 15, no. 1 (2022): 94-111. https://doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2020.1737726.