Khao'na Kitchen (pronounced KAH-OWN-A), founded by Cole Carothers and Shilpa Nandwani, was built on the footsteps of revolutionaries before us who believed in the power of community and fought for their rights to thrive. Khao’na means to "eat now" in Visayan and to "feast now" in Punjabi and Khao’na Kitchen is a fusion between Filipino and Indian culture, is cooperatively owned and offers wellness coaching, educational workshops & curriculum, and the catering of traditional Indian + Filipino meals with a healthy twist. Khao'na Kitchen is based in Brooklyn, NY and is a queer, gender non-conforming, woman and people of color-run cooperative. Khao'na Kitchen prides itself on delicious, unique, non-factory methods of creating sustainable food while decolonizing our minds and methods of what it means to create & eat food that has ridges, curves, & bumps yet never sacrificing flavor or integrity.
Based in Paris, Céline Pelcé works as a food artist. She began working with food while working as interior designer : she considers both food and architecture as elements built on a same action : ingestion, extraction of matter and techniques, in different transformation processes. And this, in order to respond to basic human needs : housing and eating. She now uses food as a material to build artistic experiences : food enables her to express the poetic of territories, culinary rituals, and craft techniques. Her research grows in collaboration with chefs and craftsmen, with their codes, and rules. The researches are then staged and proposed to the public, as guests. These experiences consist in food installations, performances, or orchestrated meals. In each of these format, Céline uses food to convey a story, and the guest is invited to embed it, by the act of eating. The experience ends in the disapperance. These situations include a dimension of hospitality : as the piece starts to be shared and eaten, each guest has the room to be a part of it, and to make the piece his own.
Stefanie Sacks, MS, CNS, CDN is a nationally recognized Culinary Nutritionist and leading authority on eating to prevent and manage illness. For over two decades, she has helped transform the way people eat using hands on experiences to inspire, educate and offer practical tools for food lifestyle change. She has her Masters of Science in Nutrition from Teachers College, Columbia University, is a Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Dietitian Nutritionist and is a graduate of the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts. As a chef, nutritionist and innate healer she uses food as a conduit to deep transformation. She inspires, educates and empowers people to eat and live to their full potential. Her book What The Fork Are You Eating is a must-read guide for anyone looking to improve food choice! In addition to being a frequent print, radio and television media guest expert, in 2017 Stefanie was inducted into Les Dames D'Escoffier, an international philanthropic organization of women leaders in the field of food, fine beverage and hospitality. She is a member of the International Association for Culinary Professionals and sits on the advisory board of the Natural Gourmet Institute, A Greener World and Amagansett Food Institute. A native New Yorker, Stefanie lives on the East End of Long Island with her husband, two very active boys and Blossom, the family dog. When she is not in her kitchen creating new recipes or feeding her family, she is swimming in the bay or hiking with her dog.
Marente van der Valk_AIR_Photo_2017_Canape as part of the Non-Human Narrative Series. The canape consists out of several fermented and air-dries elements and is served with tepache.
Marente van der Valk is a Dutch-born, London based chef, (food) designer and food stylist. She graduated in 2012 from a MA Design and Environment at Goldsmiths University of London, and has since then been focusing on projects and events with an emphasis on environmental awareness and community mindedness. Her work is often a multi-sensory experience where a love for bringing people together results in a wealth of flavours and colours and a feel-good atmosphere. Currently, Marente is six months into a year-long culinary residency at the Jan van Eyck Academy’s Food Lab in Maastricht. Founding the Food lab at JvE and running it on a day-to-day basis has enabled her to investigate new approaches and angles to her cooking processes and the interactive properties of food and the act of eating. By focusing on the wealth of the edible plant world - using organic, seasonal produce straight from local farmers- and the use of the whole vegetable where possible, as well as considering meat to be a treat, she strives to have a minimal impact on the environment.