I want to think about the eating experiences that Xanterra tells the world it offers in Yellowstone—from picnicking or grabbing a quick bite at Canyon Lodge Eatery to nailing a coveted reservation at Lake Yellowstone Hotel Dining Room or climbing on the saddle to head out to the Roosevelt Old West Dinner Cookout. To what ex-tent do these experiences prioritize conservation? Or are they all about enjoyment? And do they allow for an experience of public lands characterized by using food as a response to social, economic, and political marginalization, the need for which was described in Chapter 3?
Despite being an industrial concessioner, as my close reading of their corporate narratives shows, Xanterra is no slouch in delivering fresh, local, sustainable food options, thus manifesting the conservation element of the national parks promise. However, not all food concession venues are made equal with regard to conservation. Dining spectacles like the Old West Cookout appear to be entirely independent of Xanterra’s sustainability-related priorities. And basic cafeterias, at the level of the Canyon Lodge Eatery, may nod to concepts of sustainability and local sourcing but provide few options and very little information that allows eaters to “do the right thing” as they customize their meals. True conservation priorities are articulated and expressed most clearly in the park’s higher-end dining experiences, where cosmopolitan diners are courted with detailed information about product sourcing and company commitments to the environment as they exercise their taste proclivities.
In earlier chapters, I outlined the kind of traveler the national parks were built for—those who were better off, seeking distance from the madding crowd, looking for an authentic experience with nature that would allow them to reflect and change their lives for the better. The current dining experiences available at national parks to a large extent miss their mark with the cosmopolitan descendants of this crowd. Even with enhanced efforts around local food sourcing and sustainable practices, something is missing. At the lower end, there’s not much information about food and conservation, or there aren’t many options. At the higher end, information abounds, and the reservation policies satisfy the desire for exclusivity. But in many instances, like in Canyon Lodge M66 Grill, there is no communing with nature to be done while dining. Almost theatrical experiences like the Roosevelt Old West Cookout provide kitschy cachet in today’s experience economy and capitalize on a truly spectacular natural environment, but provide little at all in the way of a conservation-minded dining experience.
In conclusion, a glimpse of the way that food concessions are narrativized at Yellowstone demonstrates how the kinds of tensions between conservation and enjoyment that have been inherent in the parks since they were founded play them-selves out. The US relies on industrial food concessions in the parks, but the stories told by corporate giants like Xanterra encourage the visitors who are paying any attention—and the cosmopolitans certainly are—to swallow any unreconciled contradictions, safe in the knowledge that even if the most common ways of eating in the parks seem to undermine the founding premise of these lands, their individual acts of Romantic consumption support a better and more sustainable foodscape. Chapter 5 examines how narratives about aspirational dining experiences in the parks from concessioners, lifestyle media, and restaurant visitors themselves shape and reflect cosmopolitan priorities that set the stage for the kinds of bioregionalist and Indigenous-centered ecologies that are explored in more depth in Chapter 6.
Note
1 As of August 2023, there are no food concessions in 27 parks: American Samoa, Arches, Biscayne, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Congaree, Cuyahoga Valley, Gates of the Arctic, Great Sand Dunes, Guadalupe Mountains, Haleakala, Hot Springs, Indiana Dunes, Joshua Tree, Kenai Fjords, Kobuk Valley, Lake Clark, Mammoth Cave, New River Gorge, North Cascades, Pinnacles, Redwood, Saguaro, Theodore Roosevelt, Wind Cave, and Wrangell St. Elias (www.nps.gov/subjects/ concessions/concessioners-search.htm#).
References
Aubrey, Allison. 2013. “Hold the Hot Dog: National Park Visitors Can Feast on Bison Burgers.” NPR.org, June 7. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/06/07/18927 0752/hold-the-hot-dog-national-park-visitors-can-feast-on-bison-burgers.
Bartlett, Richard A. 1985. Yellowstone: A Wilderness Besieged. Tucson: University of Ari-zona Press.