Abstract
Public pedagogies in tourism and education in Australia suggest that food is a medium through which we learn more about each other’s cultures: in other words food is a pedagogy of multiculturalism. Drawing on a white Anglo Australian man’s memories of food in different intercultural encounters, this paper prises open the concept of eating the Other. There has been trenchant critique of food multiculturalism and the consuming cosmopolitan in Australia (Hage 1997; Probyn 2004; Duruz 2010). Thus, several writers critique the prevailing idea that eating ethnic food is a sign of cosmopolitanism, and even anti-racism, in individuals and cities in Australia (Hage 1997; Sheridan 2002; Duruz 2010). Hence, the notion of eating the Other has been taken up to discuss how ethnicity becomes an object of enrichment for white people through the eating of ethnic food in restaurants (Hage 1997) and cooking ethnic food at home (Heldke 2003). 
 
 In this paper we present an ‘entangled’ story of Frank which includes white expatriate masculinity, multiculturalism with ethnics and what Heldke calls ‘colonial food adventuring’. Drawing on a close reading of Frank’s story, we argue that an evaluation of food multiculturalism needs to historicise, gender and racialise inter-cultural food encounters. Thus, we argue that there are ethnic food socialities other than those of home-building or restaurant multiculturalisms. We suggest that culturalist and political economy pedagogies of food multiculturalism could be augmented by one that attends to the production of whiteness and gender.
Highlights
There is a long history in Australia of concerted efforts to construct food as a medium through which people learn about other cultures and as a sign, when they eat diverse cultural foods, that their cities and regions are more tolerant of difference
Eating others we provide a close reading of three influential authors who write on the politics of eating ethnic food
Cosmo-multiculturalism and home-building multiculturalism Drawing on interview data with Lebanese migrants, restaurant staff and white Australian customers who visit restaurants that serve Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine, Hage (1997) coins the term ‘multiculturalism without ethnics’ to get at a number of dynamics in ethnic food eating amongst the white middle classes in inner Sydney
Summary
There is a long history in Australia of concerted efforts to construct food as a medium through which people learn about other cultures and as a sign, when they eat diverse cultural foods, that their cities and regions are more tolerant of difference. We call these efforts a public pedagogy for ‘official multiculturalism’ (Gunew 1993). ISSN: 1449-2490; http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/portal PORTAL is published under the auspices of UTSePress, Sydney, Australia
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