Destination Plate: The Relationship Between Place Identity and Gastronomic Landscape in the Context of Deterritorialisation, Homogenisation, and McDisneyisation

The gastronomic landscape, extending beyond culinary culture and represents the natural resources and cultural heritage interwoven with the local community, is an integral aspect of fundamental everyday practices and symbolic interactions. Furthermore, it is also a key component of cultural landscapes and destinations, strengthening place identity and enriching the tourism experience. However, as deterritorialisation intensifies and spreads, driving homogenisation, it becomes harder for any element within the social structure, including tourism to remain unaffected. Under these threats, gastronomic landscape elements may become profit-driven, developed and utilised without cultural sensitivity, thereby paving the way for McDisneyisation. This process simplifies the tourism experience, undermines place identity, and further deepens its loss of meaning. Ultimately, the destination resembles a plate filled with uniform items of uncertain substance, raising concerns about its nutritional value. Accordingly, the study’s distinctive contribution lies in its novel integration of place identity and the gastronomic landscape through an explanatory approach and an integrative literature review, placing tourism at the core within key sociological concepts, primarily deterritorialisation, homogenisation, and McDisneyisation. As a result, the study highlights the gastronomic landscape's crucial role in enhancing place identity, shedding light on its multidimensional connection to a destination's culture, and promoting gastronomic diversity and authenticity.