Happy Spring Forward from BIPOC Foodways Alliance!

What we've been up to, where we're going

Hello friends! 

Forgive me for the long delay between posts.

We have actually been up to rather a lot over here at BFA— here’s an update on what those things have been.

When 50, rent Lambo

First and foremost, we celebrated Sean’s 50th birthday!

Happy birthday, Sean. In between pool, karaoke, a surprise gathering, Cowboy Coffee Cake (his childhood fave— don’t knock ‘til you try, and make sure you use the authentic 1973 recipe) and a Las Vegas Lamborghini rental amongst other things (see where we dined on his 50th below) Sean has launched a birthday capital campaign for North American Traditional Food Systems (NATIFS) to raise funds for his amazing work there. If you feel so inclined to contribute, the link is here.

Secondly, Sabrina and I have been diligently working on the content that accompanies the West African Table we co-hosted last month, and like many things that require deep creative thinking, it’s taking a bit longer than anticipated. Like I always said to my cooks when I ran kitchens, always err on the side of quality rather than time-saving. I’d rather have people wait awhile to receive something amazing than to receive something mediocre fast. So, stay tuned for that when it’s just right. Here’s a photo of my egusi from that Table:

photo: Uche Iroegbu

Sean and I also co-hosted our first-ever ticketed BIPOC Foodways Alliance Table at Owamni last month. Trying out a ticketed dinner was meant to accomplish two goals:

1. Inviting the greater community to our work. We do know that our intimate, 10-person Tables only accommodate a small-ish group each year, and so we wanted to offer the opportunity to the the larger community to join in. 

2. We wanted to see if we could raise some funds for our organization, to help continue funding our work. We offer our monthly Tables free of charge in part to ensure a diverse Table, one of the anchors of our foundation. Although we offered tickets at a premium price point ($150) we donated half of the tickets free of charge to continue our mission of inviting a diverse guest list. 

We will be exploring this format as the year continues, but you can look forward to at least one (or more) ticketed events in 2024, and hopefully a much larger festival-style event towards the end of summer or early fall to celebrate all things BIPOC Foodways. Stay tuned.

One of our littlest guests tries an elk tamal from our Black + Indigenous Table. Photo: Uche Iroegbu

The dinner that Sean and I co-hosted was very well-received (if you were there, thank you for your support!) This very special Table allowed us to explore the intersections between Black + Indigenous foodways, a subject that we are both passionate about, but it also gave us the opportunity to talk about current events, and why cultural siloing is dangerous at this point in our political climate. People of color (and white allies) are in dire need of coming together in solidarity to fight against the current uprising forces of racism, colonialism, militarism, imperialism and capitalism. Reducing silos between cultural communities is one of the founding tenets of BFA, and this dinner was a manifestation of that goal.

In that spirit, in the coming months, we hope to address more current events within our Table series, and our April Table will feature a Palestinian co-host. We have long been looking for the appropriate Palestinian co-host to represent and honor the Palestinian Table during this time of great suffering for the Palestinian people. BIPOC Foodways Alliance stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and it is our hope to provide a platform for a representative within that community to tell their very important story through the lens of food. In celebration of Ramadan, we will serve this dinner after sundown. Ramadan Mubarak to anyone celebrating! Look forward to content produced by filmmaker Ryan Stopera, photographer Uche Iroegbu, and myself on that Table in the weeks to come. 

We are also in discussions with a Sudanese co-host for an upcoming Table to help raise awareness around the famine affecting about 25 million people in that country.

Sean and I have an (over) abundance of food in our lives, and as we run organizations that focus on and celebrate food, we want to always be mindful of how we are representing ourselves, with the full consciousness that many, many people on the planet do not have enough to eat.

Because BIPOC Foodways Alliance provides a platform for undertold and marginalized food stories, this is one of the realities we can explore through the lens of food. While we love restaurant culture, restaurant culture is only one of the lenses through which we should be looking at food, and we hope our work can continue to expand what’s possible with food media, up to and including the reality of hunger.

In that vein, we are thrilled to announce that we have just received a $24,000 Minnesota State Arts Board grant to continue this work. This money, in addition to the more than $10,000 we received from The Wedge Change Matters program (if you rounded up, thank you!) we can ensure programming through the end of 2024. But to continue to grow, we still need your support! Please consider donating here.

More to come, very soon!

Where we dined on Sean’s 50th birthday, plus more Las Vegas restaurant recs: