Hidden in Plain Sight: The Glass Kitchen and Women’s Culinary Innovation in Rural Tourism

Abstract

Sustainable gastronomy has become an important lens for understanding how rural tourism can connect food heritage, local ingredients, community livelihoods, and more responsible forms of development. Yet, within many rural tourism villages, the everyday culinary practices that sustain local food systems often remain hidden behind destination branding and formal tourism planning. This study examines this overlooked dimension through the concept of the “glass kitchen”, a metaphor used to describe women’s culinary labour as highly visible in daily community life but structurally invisible within tourism governance and economic recognition. Based on fieldwork in Angseri and Tegaljadi, two rural tourism villages in Bali, this research adopts a qualitative exploratory approach involving semi-structured interviews, field observations, and focus group discussions with 45 participants engaged in food production, tourism coordination, village governance, and community-based culinary activities. Thematic analysis reveals three interconnected findings: the persistence of indigenous ingredients and household-based food production, the emergence of informal culinary innovation through everyday experimentation, and the gendered organisation of culinary labour within rural tourism systems. The findings show that culinary innovation often emerges gradually from domestic kitchens, inherited knowledge, seasonal resources, and adaptive practices rather than from formal enterprises. However, these contributions remain weakly integrated into tourism narratives and decision-making structures. By advancing the glass kitchen concept, this study contributes a gender-sensitive perspective to sustainable gastronomy and rural tourism studies, arguing that inclusive tourism development requires recognition of women’s everyday culinary labour as cultural heritage, social practice, and economic potential.