Savoring “The Authentic”

Abstract

In Tower Hamlets, East London, Bangladeshi restaurateurs promote an emergent national cuisine through catering for Bengali customers and offering Bangladeshi options within generic Indian menus. On the basis of a short culinary tour, this article outlines the determining circumstances which enable this vigorous profiling of Bangladeshi foods and dishes. The pursuit of an “authentic” national cuisine, however, is bound up with globalization, which makes prized produce available all year round, and with the force of nostalgic recall, which restructures memories in a (mostly) soothing, romantic manner. My core argument is that restaurateurs who promote the Bangladeshi cuisine do so in order to highlight the pivotal role people from Bangladesh, Sylhet district especially, have played in the making of Britain's “Indian” restaurants. In the process, restaurateurs mobilize not only selected dishes “from home,” but also nostalgic images, emotions and discourses, all of which merge to conjure up the idea of a national cuisine.