Trivial, mundane or revealing? Food as a lens on ethnic norms in workplace talk

•Talk about food has been overlooked in existing research on workplace discourse.•Food is treated as mundane (Māori) vs. trivial (Pākehā) in the meetings we recorded.•Despite similarities in form, there are subtle differences in (negotiated) meaning.•Food offers a fruitful lens for exploring culturally-based norms in interaction.•This lens has the potential to support interpretation across disciplines. Talk about food has often been overlooked in existing investigations of workplace discourse. In earlier research, we established that food talk clearly ‘indexes’ interactional boundaries and informality in typical New Zealand workplaces. In this paper we identify the very different status of food as a legitimate topic in Māori workplaces. Within the normative constraints of the meeting genre, analysis compares food talk asmundanein a Māori organisation, buttrivialin a Pākehā (majority group) context. Food talk thus provides an unexpected means of accessing information about distinctive cultural norms, offering an innovative lens on areas of cross-cultural sensitivity.