Regina Castro Leal
Foodie Passport – A walk around the world
Prompt: Our goal was to design a walking tour grounded in ethnography as a primary research method. We selected a specific route within the city and focused on a particular issue, topic, phenomenon, or sensory experience that shapes how people interact with the space.
In this assignment, I selected a path around our area that uses an ethnographic lens to explore how culture is represented in New York City with food. I’ve always been a really big foodie, and New York City is the perfect place to build a food tour, because on nearly every corner, there is a new restaurant representing a different culture. So in this tour, I focused on 5 stops that represent a different country and its traditions. Overall, some aspects of culture are easy to understand through a walking tour because they are immediately visible and sensory. Moving between each stop made it easy to notice changes in atmosphere, pace, and social interaction. However, some aspects are more difficult to fully address through a walking tour alone. While the tour offers a tasting palette of global cultures, it cannot fully capture the deeper economic, social, and historical layers that shape these businesses. My goal in this tour was to invite people to be more aware of the lives and histories of the city through cuisine.