Everybody was boodle fighting: military histories, culinary tourism, and diasporic dining

AbstractThis article examines how Toronto’s Filipina/o food establishments have engaged with military practices of eating together across rank through the boodle fight, in which diners eat with their hands, sharing heaps of rice and viands on a central table covered in banana leaves. It asks: what negotiations do urban ethnic restauranteurs make with the Philippines’ history of US imperialism and militarism when they advertise and host boodle fights in their establishments? This study excavates the boodle fight from its West Point origin to its appearances in Philippine militarized civic education and its entry into transpacific diplomatic gatherings and urban diasporic culinary tourism initiatives in North America and the Middle East. It further anchors itself by means of oral histories with restaurateurs and diners—around a boodle fight meal—and explores the entangled narratives of militarism across generations in the Philippine diaspora. While the boodle fight is advertised as a break-down of ranks in ...