I'd explore food in relationship to character development a bit more (you covered the cultural possibilities beautifully).

There is also the senuous nature of food. Fully dressed people, savoring their food, and devouring each other with their eyes, can set up for an interlude without any clothes being dropped. I come from the school that you don't stick something in your scene if you don't intend to give it a dramatic import. Food can provide an insight into the passion (or lack of it) in your characters. There's a world of difference between a mother feeding her child, and a potential lover feeding his or her partner.

I vote for not having long and detailed discriptions of banquets if there's no point in it but showing off your culinary prowess, but if you have two enemies at a table and one suspects the other of having poisoned something on that table...ah, then you have tensions, some reason for the food being there. Or look at "Like Water, Like Chocolate," or "Tom Jones" where the food has an aphrodisiac effect. Or what if two people go to lunch and one orders hot spicey foods, and the other goes for turkey on white bread with mayo only. Does that give you an insight into their personality? Some people make a food choice...like being a vegetarian...out of choice; and some people purposefully eat foods against their upbringing out of rebellion; and some people don't eat because they have bought into the delusion that thin is all that matters. This is telling of the person's personality.

Or maybe that's just me.

A suggestion that may be ignored without offense.