All On The Table

In the final episode of this season, I am reunited with Kelli Anderson, LinYee Yuan, and Jen Monroe over a potluck dinner and dessert party. They compare and contrast their experiences in the food and design worlds over a homemade mezze platter, wine, and pastries. 

I share fresh veggie spring rolls and a bottle of lightly chilled red wine with Jen Monroe for Happy Hour. Jen is the founder of Bad Taste, a Brooklyn-based project committed to exploring new ways of thinking about food and consumption. Jen approaches food as fantasy and as a transportive medium, considering innovations in art and technology to engineer multi-sensory food experiences. Jen's work spans from private catering to pop-ups to food styling. Past work has included experimental cotton candy, concept pop-up dinners, a rendering of a futuristic menu in response to climate change, and a series of immersive, monochromatic ten course "color meals."

I'm joined by LinYee Yuan for a lunch of slow roasted salmon with citrus and chiles, along with a simple avocado salad and parmesan lemon Israeli couscous. LinYee is the founder and editor of MOLD, a critically-acclaimed editorial platform about designing the future of food. Through original reporting, MOLD explores how designers can address the coming food crisis by creating products and systems that will help feed 9 billion people by the year 2050. LinYee was previously the entrepreneur in residence for QZ.com and an editor for Core77, T: The New York Times Style Magazine and Theme Magazine. She has written about design and art for Food52, Design Observer, Cool Hunting, Elle Decor and Wilder Quarterly. LinYee also contributed the foreword to “Food Futures: Sensory Explorations in Food Design” and “Cooking Up Trouble.” 

This season begins with Kelli Anderson, an artist working across many disciplines including book making, experimental animation, sculpture, and printmaking. She is known for her design, animation, and illustration work for places like NPR, “The New Yorker,” “Wired,” MoMA, and the “New York Times,” as well as her branding for Russ & Daughters, Momofuku, and Munchery. Anderson is the author of two experimental and interactive pop-up books: “This Book is a Camera,” which transforms into a pinhole camera, and “This Book is a Planetarium,” which houses a tiny planetarium and other contraptions. We discuss her ongoing fascination with lo-fi, tactile creation over a breakfast of broccoli turmeric frittata and a grapefruit, blood orange and honey parfait. 

Launched by photographer Aaron Bernstein, “All On The Table” curates and maintains community around food to form meaningful conversations between the overlaps of creative circles in New York City. This time around, Aaron sits down with paper wiz Kelli Anderson, MOLD founder LinYee Yuan, and food experience designer Jen Monroe to discuss their work at the intersection of food, art, and technology. Season Two of "All On The Table" will be released in full this summer. Stay tuned!