Essay on Food
Like other survival substances, food is really crucial for surviving. From a semiotic point of view, taking food is not only for surviving, but is the part of various culture. When experiencing a Korean Barbeque place which located in Downtown Toronto, names Korean Grill house, it is quite inspiring to do the semiotics analysis about the food experience there. The idea surrounding the dinner experience of Korean Barbeque focuses better on emphasizing the customer’s involvement in preparing the cuisine rather than the concept of pre-prepared restaurant cuisine.
Basically, you are in charged of your own food is the rule for Korean Barbeque. It means that the customer only would get the raw meat from the restaurant and they have to cook their food by using the grill in the centre of the dining table. At this point, the grill, which should be settled in the kitchen but sitting on the dining table, becomes a signifier that signified the customer’s involvement in preparing the cuisine.
Based on the scholar article “Food” written by Marcel Danesi: “The term that is often used to designate the system of connotation that food evokes is cuisine. Cuisine informs us as to what certain people eat, how they make it, and what it reveals about them.(Danesi, p 194)” By getting involved in the process of cuisine, the customer is interrupting the raw meat with their modality judgments. “It is interesting to note that when people accept the cuisine of others as not only tasty but as a delicacy, the culture of the food-makers concomitantly takes on greater importance” (Danesi, 2012, p 199) Since customers are in charged of making their own food, they are putting their individual perceive narrative into the food during the progress of roasting the raw meat. The progress that the raw meat is being roasted, in the mean time, it is the transformation from natural to cultural. The grill, the raw meat and the idea of letting the customer getting involved into preparing food encode the sign of “Korean Barbeque”.
Even though customers are in charged of making their own food in Korean Barbeque, it still has differences with buffet restaurant because waiters would help the customer set the grill and bring some small dishes of appetizers, rice as well. During the dining period, waiters also come over to change backing tray for several times. However, compare to what the consumers need to make, waiters don’t get much involved with the dining process. This setting is a code for signifying the status of the costumer that having food in Korean Barbeque. The social language of the whole dining idea is: you won’t get the ready-made food and you need to make your own food. Those signs are sending people a message of Korean Barbeque would not be a luxury food experience.
Close association towards Semiotics of Korean Barbeque can be related to sense of smell. Some smoke would be produced during the process of roasting raw meat and the customer would carry the smoke on their clothes or hairs around. According to this specific smell of Korean Barbeque, the customer would build the connotation that could be linked with this particular dining experience. “No sign make sense on its own but only in relation to other signs. Both signifier and signified are purely relational entities. (Chandler, 2014)” In this case, the smoke turns into a signifier of Korean Barbeque and it signified the dining experience. Both of them are unable to be isolated. Accordingly, the cognition that attached with Korean Barbeque is established in customer’s mind. Whenever the customer smells the smoke, they are able to recall the memory of this food experience from their mind.
The semiotic investigation of the Korean Barbeque place: Korean Grill house makes the idea of how customers getting involvement in preparing cuisine stand out. In conclusion, the grill which sitting in the centre of the dining table; the raw meat which suppose to be cooked in the kitchen but be in charged by consumers; the smoke that be carried around by customers and the different involvements between waiters and consumers are all the components of establishing the sign, which is: Korean Barbeque. In other words, those are codes that encode the Korean Barbeque. Meanwhile, all those different codes have different signifier and signified that are related to each other.
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