CFP ASFS Panel in June 2018: Food on the Move

1. Over the last decade there have been shifts in the dining preferences of middle-class American cruise passengers. I employ user posts from the online board CruiseCritic’s “Cruise Foodies” sub-forum to show that, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, passengers demonstrated a strong preference for flexible onboard dining including variety, quantity, and service around-the-clock. Many remained aware that logistical challenges—like those pertaining to the use of fresh and local ingredients onboard—meant cruise food would be inherently ‘inauthentic.’ Thus, while they desired authenticity, they primarily looked for it at ports, demonstrating a distrust of corporations. In the next decade, cruise lines advanced a project to bring ethnically themed dining experiences onboard as a way of transforming ships into spaces for cultural immersion. I argue that cruise lines used this ‘authenticity project’ as an alternate means of bringing perceived authenticity to those who demanded it—a workaround for otherwise impractical logistical changes. Passengers increasingly contemplated the authenticity of onboard fare in the second decade, a shift that coincided with the authenticity project. While some perceived cruise ships as spaces where they could encounter a range of cultures in “authentic” ways, many rejected the idea, continuing to point to the logistical challenges that made cruise food inauthentic in the first place. Thus, the project largely failed to appease middle-class tourists searching for authenticity. They continued looking to ports, though past the commodified “front regions,” to satisfy the penchant for local flavors that corporations could not provide.