Authenticated Spaces: Blogging Sensual Experiences in Turkish Grill Restaurants in London

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of food, space, and performance within the experiences of food bloggers in London. It looks at the ways that Turkish grill (ocakba) restaurants in Dalston, London, are imagined, reinvented, defined, and approached in food blog writing. Bloggers provide the reader with personal narratives of their trip to the restaurant space. These narratives reveal sensual experiences of concern, anxiety, fear, excitement, and joy. This article pays attention both to the visceral realm and to discourse in order to understand the performances of space and body and the ways that they create fantasies of the familiar and strange in the bloggers' experiences of walking in Dalston and sitting in its restaurants. This article tries to answer the following questions: How is authenticity produced and attached to space and body? What kinds of images are crucial in this production? The author argues that the production of authenticity is closely related to the reproduction of stereotypical images of class and gender in food blog narratives.