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Qualitative Research Method

Participant Observation 

I conducted a sample of participant observation at a fine dining Thai cuisine restaurant in Norwood, MA. The restaurant has been around for a long time and is known to be one of the best Thai restaurants around. The restaurant used to be in a smaller location, but within the past few years it was relocated to a bigger venue. I chose to dine at this thai restaurant because I was unfamiliar with curry cuisine served at the restaurant and had never been there before.

Research Question

In what ways does my social position shape my personal experience of eating a restaurant that is unfamiliar to me? 

Initial Thoughts & Expectations

I decided this restaurant would be an interesting place to visit, since I have never been there before and I typically do not eat curry. For the restaurant's website, I was initially impressed with the clean, well-organized layout. I felt the website itself had a sleek, modern feel that was decorated with earthy tones. On the home page, there was a slide show of pictures of the restaurant. As a white middle class female, I thought this slide show depicted a modern, high end, esthetically pleasing layout of the restaurant as well as visually appealing Thai cuisine. Based on the pictures of the restaurant's layout, I believe this restaurant caters to middle and upper class customers and particularly caucasian customers because the people depicted in the pictures were older, white people wearing business casual attire. As a technology savvy college student, I found the online menu to be easily accessible and easy to navigate. The website provided both a lunch and dinner menu. The dinner menu was split up into several different tabs, which included appetizers, soups and salads, vegetarian, curry, poultry and meat, seafood, noodles, fried rice and sides. Based on the online website, there seemed to be a variety of food options. Since I was going to the restaurant with my vegetarian friend, I wanted to make sure there were vegetarian options. Seeing the variety of vegetarian options reassured me that my friend would have a variety of dishes to choose from.

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Photography from flickr.com.

Credit for the photography (from top to bottom of this page) goes to these flickr accounts:

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iconoclast020 (top photo on left)

Stephan (first slide background)

Hanne Johansen  (third slide background)

The second slide background is a photo I took at a fine dining Thia restaurant 

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