Plates Without Borders – UnFeatured
- By Plateful Cafe
Plateful Cafe was recently featured in UnFeatured
Anthony Bourdain once declared the dinner table The Great Equalizer: a space where division melts into unity over aromas and flavours that speak to us in a tongue that the mind doesn’t need to understand.
Iolanda echoed him. “When you sit down and eat together, you forget where you’re coming from and just concentrate on the food you’re eating,” she said over a crackly phone call. “It breaks down so many barriers.”
With inequality, xenophobia and ethno-nationalism surging across Europe, are dinner tables not more important than ever? To find out, I got in touch with two social enterprises in London and Rotterdam serving up much more than food.
One Tbsp. Community
Iolanda Chirico is the founder of Plateful Café, a London-based social enterprise that connects refugees with local communities through food. The initiative centres around a team of refugee chefs preparing dishes from their country of origin for pop-up events or catering services.
“Every event we do, people forget that the food has been cooked and served by refugees,” Iolanda said. “They just see them like a chef coming from anywhere… the barriers are down.”
Read the full article in UnFeatured
