TALKING ABOUT FOOD

I'm currently back home in Sarawak, Malaysia. The day in punctuated by food, your metronome is meal times. Breakfast is eaten out, at a coffee shop, the hunt for the best laksa, kolo mee et al, is always on. We talk about where is good, where has had a dip in quality. It is serious talk that we start the day with. Dad comes back from work for lunch and we all sit down together. If you're not home for lunch - you call. As with dinner. There is always rice, there is always conversation. Lunch and dinner are home cooked meals. All meals are relaxed, quick, un-ceremonial. They are points of contact, checking in, keeping pace. Each with a slightly different rhythm and topic of conversation. Dinner is reflective of the times, the last week of July 2016 is a precipice. The East looks to the West and waits to see what it will do - fall or fly, there doesn't seem to be any other options. Dinner follows a pattern, it doesn't change, except who asks the questions. W...

I’m really interested in the things we talk about when we share food, and that time we share when we sit down and eat and drink. I’m interested in community, how we fit into the world, how we measure ourselves against the world, and the fact this year seems a particularly political year.  I am also acutely aware that within popular media, there are still too few a space for women to have complex and in-depth conversation - the Bechdel test is still relevant to do today, with many films failing. Therefore, this is an interview column with women I find inspiring, and we sit down and eat and drink. I recently meet with Emma Underwood, GM of Burnt Truffle in Haswell, for an earlier dinner. She was down in London to do Blood Shot at The Dairy with the Sticky Walnut crew. We spoke about how a restaurant can create a community, how people can still feel tribal about the space they have carved out for themselves. Both our PhDs had feminism theory as the main component and so we s...

I ’m really interested in the things we talk about when we share food, and that time we share when we sit down and eat and drink. I’m interested in community, how we fit into the world, how we measure ourselves against the world, and the fact this year seems a particularly political year, a year into a new government after a coalition, with the EU referendum, plus London’s mayoral campaign. I am also acutely aware that within popular media, there are still too few a space for women to have conversation that range across different topics - the Bechdel test is still relevant to do today, with many films failing. Therefore, this is an interview column with women I find inspiring, and we sit down and eat and drink. It is very much a 'short & sweet' snapshot, but hopefully is an insight into some wonderfully interesting people.  I recently sat down with Vera Chok , writer, actress, performance maker. We have, over the years, talked a lot about identity, trying to unde...

I am constantly trying to find a home away from home, away from home. I’m constantly trying to run away to somewhere comfy, like Goldilocks trying to work out which is the comfiest bed to sleep in. Berlin has become that place.  I have been coming to Berlin since 2008; it is my almost twice-yearly pattern. I came here for three months and wrote the first (terrible!) draft of my PhD thesis here, and over the years I have built up a small but wondrous group of friends. I grew up in Malaysia, New Zealand, and now London is my home and soon to be the place I have lived the longest. At my heart, I am a homebody, a homebody with itchy feet and a need for adventure. And so I calm both urges by visiting Berlin. Berlin is familiar, and yet changes, develops and grows, but hasn’t lost its soul. And so, this is a round up of what my most recent trip looked like, in food and drink, I have a few my favourites, which are asterisked. I stayed most of the time at my friend Sarah’s in Ne...

Pillow talk is a series of short ponderings - those little thoughts you have just as you are going to sleep at night, waking up in the morning, or after an afternoon nap.  #PillowForYourThoughts Tastings and Adjectives - Sunday afternoon reflection on how you approach writing about things when you're trying to communicate what the experience is like, in particular, cocktails.

I write for CODE Quarterly, various thought pieces about where the industry is today and looking to ask questions around where we are heading. Here is a round up of all the pieces I have written for CODE Quarterly, thus far.

I went to Copenhagen and got swept away. It was a cold-ish October, but that didn't matter, Copenhagen is all about the hygge. Hygge is refined coziness, that equates to the glow of candles amongst beautifully designed furniture.