Belen FLEMING © 2022 Belen Fleming | Belu Photography
two women
Julie Burton and Chaz Sandifer
Chaz Sandifer missed her book club. "Pre-pandemic we would gather and I would cook dinners on a small scale, but no one wanted to do it on Zoom. I just missed it, I wanted to bring it back." As she was thinking of how important it had become to her to break bread with her friends while sharing ideas, she had a thought about inviting more people in. And because she's an incredible entrepreneur, the founder of theNEWmpls and the Lakeview Terrace Farmers Market among other ventures, she decided the time was right to go bigger, to bring storytelling to life through food.
Sandifer approached her friend Julie Burton, the founder of ModernWell, and the two came up with a new dinner series that will run through 2022. "Our mission here has always been about creating community," Burton told me, "and creating community through food is one of our favorite things! Learning about different cultures and histories through food is such a great way to create understanding because, you know, there's something really great that happens when you're sharing flavors with people you may not know."
The two women have launched Stories Behind the Menu as a series of four dinners to be held in ModernWell's space over the year. Each dinner will explore different cultural source materials (books, movies, etc.) along with food prepared by a local chef who has personal ties to the cuisine. The first one launches on February 17th with a focus on African American food, as highlighted in the Netflix docu-series High on the Hog.
Food will be prepared by Chef K and Mariam of K's Revolutionary Catering. The two local women have created a menu that bridges their African heritage to the current moment, with a multi-course dinner that will bring new and familiar flavors to the discussion. There will be okra, there will be joloff rice, and a few more things that may not be in your own cooking repertoire.
For all the women involved, the idea is to feed and be fed: food, knowledge, personal experiences, cultural history, shared understanding.
"A lot of people think: I'm going to read a book or I'm going to listen to a speaker lecture on diversity," Sandifer notes. "But how about if we sit down, break bread, talk to each other and share stories that create understanding." It's tactile, it's an experience, something that I've been craving as much as the next person.
After this first dinner, which coincides with Black History Month, the series will continue to dig deep into other cultures. They're planning a Jewish dinner in April, one focused on Indigenous culture in August, and a Mexican event in December.
Tickets are $125, or $100 for ModernWell members, and include the multi-course meal, beverages, and discussion. There are only 75 spots per dinner in order to keep the event small and intimate, which means you'll want to grab tickets sooner than later. The rest of the 2022 dinner dates will be posted as they are confirmed.
