Paper short abstract:

By focusing on the development of eating out and the street food landscape in Bucharest, the research seeks to explore how food trends play into the dynamics of social differentiation. More specifically, it concerns the foodie engagement with cheap, popular foods.

Paper long abstract:

By focusing on the development of eating out and the street food landscape in Bucharest, the research seeks to explore how food trends play into the dynamics of social differentiation. More specifically, it concerns the engagement with cheap, popular foods of an emerging category of urban foodies (Johnston and Baumann 2010).

At the centre of these emerging codifiers of foodie taste is a street food item called 'mici': traditionally a working-class food available particularly in open-air markets or bus terminals around Romania, consisting of freshly grilled, garlicky minced meat rolls. Other similarly 'trending' items are cheap cuts of meat or meat stews usually cooked and consumed as hearty, filling meals recalling Bourdieu's 'taste of necessity'. These items are either consumed in peripheral locations (as a form of adventurous gastronomic local tourism) or are recreated in middle-class, gourmet consumption contexts.

This recently acquired appetite can be viewed as a provocative redefinition of class taste. Through these instances of 'eating otherness' (Abbots 2017), foodies engage in forms of appropriation politics. This pursuit seeks to consolidate a foodie self around narratives and performances of inclusiveness, morality and personal authenticity, with a keen focus on the contexts of food production and consumption. Transgressive experiences, such as eating greasy, cheap meats in improvised, peripheral venues while immersing oneself in unfamiliar crowds are enhancing a foodie portfolio engaged in contemporary class politics.

The paper will discuss ethnographic and interview data centred around how the materiality of such food items is experienced sensorially.