On urban residents and burger stores

Gastronomic localities as places of multiscalar intersection

Abstract

On the basis of an ethnographic case study on burger stores in a peripheral district of Bonn (Germany), I address two combined aspects of food culture. On the one hand, I focus on regional references in everyday practices. On the other hand, the representation of socio-structural diversity in a local context, in which distinct levels of mobility intersect, is being discussed. The central question of this article is how the intersection of multiscalar spatial references is processed by the residents of the district. I investigate if urban gastronomy can help for orientation in urban everyday life. The case study is situated in the broader field of research on gastronomy and spatial references in food culture, tackling the gap regarding districts outside of metropolitan centers. I come to the conclusion that describing gastronomic localities as a part of "ethnic business" is misleading. Instead, there are different formats of multiscalar orientation apparent in local food cultural practices.