The purpose of this study is to present a theoretical analysis that seeks an answer on the question of what the meanings of food are in anthropology and sociology. As a result of the analysis, it is determined that food has three main meanings (i) consumption, (ii) transfer, and (iii) identity. Moreover, six sub-meanings are found under these three main meanings. Consumption is represented by hedonic and symbolic sub-meanings, transfer is represented by culture and emotion sub-meanings, and identity is represented by personal and national identity sub-meanings. One of the reasons that make this work unique is that it defines and categorizes meanings of food in terms of individual and society. Another value added by this study is the Food Meaning Diagram (FMD) as a contribution to the literature. Furthermore, the study provides a basis for the construction of research in the related fields and to guide the studies to be carried out within the framework of human sciences.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to discover the factors affecting customer delight, satisfaction and dissatisfaction in fine dining experiences (FDEs).Design/methodology/approachOnline user generated 2,585 reviews on TripAdvisor for 46 five-star hotel restaurants operating in Istanbul were analyzed with the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) algorithm.FindingsLDA created nine, eight and seven topics for delight, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. The most salient topics for customer delight, satisfaction and dissatisfaction in FDEs are staff (17.3%), view (19%), and food quality (23%), respectively.Originality/valueThis study is one of the few studies investigating customer delight and satisfaction together. The study shows that FDEs can be analyzed with text mining techniques. Moreover, the study contributes to the literature on customer delight by adding staff topic as an antecedent.

Gastronomy comes from the combination of food with art, pleasure, taste, and science. In addition to food itself, the experience of the culture that food belongs to also directs people to rural areas, regions, and countries that makes food an essential attraction for tourism. The purpose of this paper is to present the transformation process of local culinary through gastronomy tourism. The structuralism approach was employed and the culinary triangle interpreted by Lévi-Strauss in the dilemma of culture and nature was taken as an exemplary model to achieve the goal. The model was transformed into a new triangle named as the Culinary Triangle in Gastronomy Tourism and evaluated in the context of cultural and artistic transformation. This new triangle consists of local, hybrid, and ornamental culinary.