Paper short abstract:

An ethnic restaurant is a place where a resident’s ethnicity is actualized. Using Caucasian restaurants in St Petersburg as a case study, the talk raises the question of how does a representation of ethnicity ‘for their own group’ (primarily migrants) and ‘for locals’ work.

Paper long abstract:

In a restaurant serving a national cuisine, one may conveniently identify people’s instrumental attitude towards ‘their own’ and ‘other people’s’ ethnicities. Using Caucasian restaurants in St Petersburg as a case study, the talk raises the question of how does a representation of ethnicity ‘for their own group’ and ‘for locals’ work. Another aim is to describe the difference between these representations in Azerbaijani, Armenian, Georgian, and other Caucasian restaurants, taking into account postcolonial and transnational contexts.

The more the restaurant is orientated towards the ‘outside’ customer, the more markers of ethnicity are activated. If a restaurant is orientated towards ‘their own’, it is less important to be consistent in the contents of the menu, the interior, or the way the waiters are dressed. Nor can one ignore the economic component in the division of restaurants into these categories ‘for us’ and ‘for them’. Cheap restaurants are left with their names, their cuisine, and their regular customers in the form of relatives, friends, and fellow-countrymen. While the owners of an expensive restaurant can think more carefully about the correspondence between the items on the menu and the advertised cuisine, hire professional artists to create an ‘ethnically colored’ interior, and order ‘suitable’ cutlery and uniforms for the waiting staff, etc. The paradox is that those ‘others’ are inclined to look for authenticity in ethnic restaurants to the extent to which they are orientated towards ‘their own people’.