What is food tourism?

Food tourism or food and tourism has emerged as a major theme for recent tourism research. This paper critically reviews and evaluates this growing subject area of tourism research thus identifies the core concepts associated with food tourism as major research themes, perspectives, and disciplinary approaches. Using the process of cognitive mapping this paper discovers that the literature on food tourism is dominated by five themes: motivation, culture, authenticity, management and marketing, and destination orientation. The authors conceptualise food tourism research from a cultural anthropology perspective, given that much of the literature on food tourism defines cuisine as place and is used in many forms and interactions with tourists.