Menus matter: examining class and Bengali cuisine culture through restaurant menus in Kolkata.

Bengali food, especially in the domestic context, has received much attention in recent academic scholarship, but there is a relative scarcity of studies on cultures of public dining practices in restaurants. This paper attempts to address this gap by exploring how a burgeoning ethnic restaurant industry serving Bengali food in Kolkata conditions class-inhered food practices. Based on in-depth interviews of 46 respondents who assessed the content of restaurant menu cards, this paper examines the branding of a local cuisine and the moulding of a neo-ethnic 'global' identity by steeping tradition and authenticity in an aura of the global. The acts of eating out in Bengali restaurants manifest an attitude of 'gastro-cosmopolitanism', practiced mostly by Bengalis who live or are perceived to live in the scope of a transnation. The paper observes that while the global latitude in the culinary order has paved the way for blending of cultures, as evident in fusion cuisine, it has simultaneously reproduced a revalorisation of an ethnic cuisine as heritage, exotic and exclusive. Further, class inflections have opened up more options to select from diverse multicultural food items revealing gustatory antinomies among consumers, who are eager to stake a global cosmopolitan identity while attempting collaterally to align with a past that is only alive in their imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]