A Conversation With Chef and Writer Tunde Wey

Wed, 07/11/2018 - 8:56am

When: April 20, 2018 at Downtown Library

Nigerian-born chef and writer Tunde Wey opened a restaurant in Detroit in 2013. A year later, realizing that the influx of capital to the city was not contributing to an inclusive revival but to the profit of those already "fluent in the language of privilege," Tunde left the restaurant and moved to New Orleans. 

He now travels around the country holding dinners, using food as a medium to have conversations about race, equity, and cultural values. Recently, the has received national press for Saarti, his lunch counter in New Orleans where white patrons were asked to pay $30 per plate and people of color were charged $12 per plate as a way to call attention to racial wealth disparity. Participants of color could “opt-in” to receive the profit redistribution. 

In this video, artist and Stamps School Professor Rebekah Modrak (whose works, such as Rethink Shinola, critically intervene in consumption) moderates a conversation with Tunde about his work as a chef, his decision to use food as provocation, the possibility of transforming consumptive acts through dinners and pop-up restaurants, discriminatory development, racial wealth disparity, and the importance of self-determination in affecting the outcomes of your life and community.  While in Ann Arbor, Wey also hosted two private dinners for local residents and advocates concerned with equity and race and offered food truck conversations for four nights.

Tunde's talk was co-sponsored by the Ann Arbor District Library, The Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning, and Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.