Culinary Culture Shock: How Tourists Cope with Unexpected Flavours

Culinary culture shock (CCS)—the discomfort and ambivalence travelers feel when encountering unfamiliar foods—remains underexplored from a short-horizon, trip-bounded perspective. While prior work notes both attractions and impediments of food in tourism, a process-oriented account of how ordinary travelers experience and navigate CCS during brief trips is still limited. This study examines CCS in Guangzhou, China and delineates how it shapes travelers’ evaluations of place. We adopt a qualitative design, combining 30 semi-structured interviews with in situ ethnographic observations across markets, street-food settings, restaurants, and guided food tours, supplemented by document analysis (e.g., visitor materials and menus). Using reflexive thematic analysis, we identify three recurrent coping trajectories—avoidance, gradual adaptation, and immersion—that unfold nonlinearly as travelers recalibrate expectations, manage sensory dissonance, and renegotiate comfort boundaries. We integrate expectancy–disconfirmation theory (EDT) with an embodied view of tasting to develop the Palate Adaptation Spiral Model (PASM), which explains CCS as recursive cycles of appraisal, strategy enactment, and re-appraisal within the span of a trip. Social influence (peers, guides, and service staff) operates as a cross-cutting mechanism that can accelerate adaptation or entrench avoidance depending on cue valence and credibility. The study clarifies the scope of CCS as general travel encounters (not restricted to culinary-motivated tourists) and specifies contextual conditions under which negative reactions are reversible. Theoretically, we connect EDT to short-term culinary adaptation through PASM; practically, we outline design levers—pre-trip expectation management, pictorial/transparent menus, and guide-mediated tasting sequences—to reduce anxiety and support constructive exploration.