Exploring Michelin Food: The Hundred-Foot Journey

Date
2023
Authors
Wan, Jean
Supervisor
Neill, Lindsay
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Master of Gastronomy
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Abstract

Released in 2014, The Hundred-Foot Journey tells the story of a migrant Indian family’s journey and experiences in settling in rural France. There, they open a restaurant called Maison Mumbai. The film’s main protagonist, Hassan, is a naturally gifted chef holding Michelin-star aspirations. Considering that the academic research focusing on the nexus of food and film is relatively new, my research makes a significant contribution to academic knowledge in those domains as well as a meaningful contribution to gastronomic knowledge. Through a constructivist paradigm, within a qualitative framework, my research uses Pine and Gilmour’s (1998) four-domain experience economy as a thematic starting point in conjunction with thematic analysis. Through that analysis, this research recognises the symbiotic relationship between the meta-theories I have chosen to underpin my research. Key to my research within the representations of Michelin-level food in The Hundred-Foot Journey has been my understanding of the visual metaphors presented within the film. Consequently, and within that nexus, my research proposes that constructs of Michelin food connote a Eurocentric bias. Within that consideration, food within The Hundred-Foot Journey can be realised as more than nutrition, because its food symbolically denotes culture, cultural hierarchy, identity, power, emotions, values and memories. As my research concludes and makes recommendations for this subject as a domain of future research, Michelin-level food could be viewed as a contemporary agent of culinary colonisation and imperialism. While films like The Hundred-Foot Journey are created for entertainment, they also portray the multifaceted aspects of the study of gastronomy. In that way, my research and The Hundred-Foot Journey signify representations of identity, culture, change, and acceptance within an ever-changing world.

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