our third service :)
✧˖° in farming, there’s a saying: "what grows together, goes together." ingredients that thrive in similar climates often complement each other beautifully on the plate. but how does this concept translate to scent and flavor?
for this aural pleasure dinner, we dove deeper into this question. we crafted a menu inspired by california’s native plants to explore how certain scents and flavors align, and what memories or emotions they evoke in us.
smell, one of our earliest-evolved senses, bypasses the thalamus, the brain’s relay station and travels directly to the amygdala and hippocampus. this connection links scent to memory and emotion in a way no other sense can. since flavor is largely driven by scent, we wondered: what can we evoke by sharing a carefully curated meal?
we invited natural perfumer icon persephenie, to expand the sensoriality of the service with her skills in scent making. she brought hand-molded herb figurines that guests were invited to touch, sniff, and play with - a 3 foot long ceremonial incense trail laid in ash to symbolize the ephemerality of the gathering as well as visually mark the passage of time - and hand made jasmine paste to wear and pair with desert. we couldn’t have asked for a more sensorial evening, thanks to all of our friends, new and old.
as we celebrate with food and music, let us remember we are living on unceded & occupied tongva land. we are deeply grateful to those who have come before us, and whose footsteps we hope to fill. they have loved & cared for our beautiful earth, by tending to this land and its critters with sweet adoration ~♡~