COOKING IN DIASPORA: A Four Week Workshop with Genevieve Villamora

ABOUT THE CLASS

The American table has been infinitely enriched by communities who have brought their cuisines to this country from somewhere else. This workshop will examine what happens to a cuisine when it travels and is cooked outside of its original cultural context. We’ll also reflect on what happens to the people who find themselves in a new place, trying to hold onto their heritage cuisine as they build a life outside of the historical, political and environmental factors that shaped it.

With the concept of diaspora as our main framework, this class will use cookbooks, articles, essays and workshop participants’ own lived experience to look at the following themes:

Week 1: The Taste of Home

Week 2: “Authenticity”

Week 3: Memory

Week 4: Transformation

First and foremost, this is a workshop for everyone who likes to read, think, and learn about food. It’s also for people who like to cook.If you connect to your culture when you eat your heritage food;If you didn’t grow up eating your heritage food in your household;If you are trying to figure out what the cuisine of your heritage means to you;If you are several generations removed from the experience of immigration or displacement and you don’t identify with any cuisine as your heritage food, …this workshop is for YOU!

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Genevieve Villamora has been obsessed with food since she plucked a serrano chile from a steaming hot bowl of sinigang when she was four years old. In 2015, she opened Bad Saint, a tiny Filipino restaurant in Columbia Heights, which she co-owned and operated for 7 years. At a time when Filipino food was surprisingly unknown in American food culture, Bad Saint garnered national and international attention for its celebration of Filipino cuisine’s brash, pungent, and complex flavors. In 2016, Bad Saint was named the #2 Best New Restaurant in the U.S. by Bon Appetit and received a 3-star review from Pete Wells in The New York Times. Both Food & Wine and Esquire name Bad Saint one of the Most Influential Restaurants of the Decade in 2019. Genevieve currently serves as Chair of the Book Committee of the James Beard Foundation’s Media Awards. She has appeared on Bon Appetit’s Food People Podcast and NPR’s Code Switch Podcast. She has adapted recipes for The New York Times and the Smithsonian’s Annual Food History Weekend. A Chicago native, she has made her home in Washington, DC for the last 30 years. She lives in Columbia Heights with her husband, son, and three cats.