Making and selling Greek food in London: migrant hospitality professionals talk about food authenticity over dinner

The 2007/2008 financial crisis more than doubled the number of Greek nationals living in the UK. This transformation became visible in London’s foodscapes, as the number of Greek restaurants in the city boomed over the last decade. In this article, we present findings from a pilot project as part of which we examined how recently arrived migrants from Greece use language over, about, and around emblematic Greek food to construct their identities and position themselves their positions within London’s diverse food scene as culinary professionals. We focus on one key participant, Filareti, who owns a Greek restaurant in north London. We analyse her discursive constructions of authenticity as they emerged during three dinner conversations she took part in. Drawing on the discourse analysis of conversation transcripts supplemented by the analysis of visual material, we show how Filareti defended, established, and justified her judgments of authenticity to other migrant hospitality professionals and members of the research team during the food talk. For her, the authenticity of Greek food is both fixed and malleable at the same time: something that must be institutionally protected but which can also be adjusted when business needs take precedence. We introduce the concept of liquid authenticity to capture the apparent contradictions in Filareti’s discourses, contextualising them against a backdrop of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly impacted the UK’s hospitality industry.