Foreign Flavours: the power of food

Food is often a key part of diasporic identities. Recipes, ingredients and flavour memories are able to travel, to be shared and experimented with. But recreating dishes in new spaces can be tricky with different ingredients and equipment. These new spaces can create complex relationships with nostalgia, memory and home. Food also works as a way to create belonging and connectivity, and can be a useful way to look at difficult topics from the history of colonialism, labour and power dynamics between the global north and south.

Over a meal created and cooked by renowned chef Budgie Montoya, Anna Sulan Masing will be hosting conversations with Budgie about his work and writing on Filipino food, poet and novelist Stephanie Sy-Quia on how she weaves food into her narratives, and one other non-fiction author (tbc).

This event is the final chapter in a series Anna Sulan has been hosting over the last 12 months at Spiritland that delved into the topics from her debut book Chinese And Any Other Asian. The book ends on a chapter about food, therefore it felt appropriate to finish this Salon series with a focus on food, over a shared meal.