For Pioneer Works’ Supper Club 2022, Chef Tara Thomas’ Menu Evokes Romantic, Sustainable Gardens
The monthly dinner series returns to NYC with dreamy fare that celebrates spring and regenerative foods
Supper Club—a community-oriented, chef-led dinner series from arts organization Pioneer Works—returns to NYC for their 10th year of crafting original, memorable dining experiences helmed by Michelin-starred restauranteurs as well as emerging culinary studios. Rather than the series’ typical location in Pioneer Works’ Red Hook, Brooklyn building, Supper Club, for the first time, is traveling to a selection of off-site locations city-wide. For chef Tara Thomas, the rooftop garden at Brooklyn Grange is both the site of and inspiration for her romantic, plant-forward supper on 24 May, which will hone the bounty and beauty of sustainable and inclusive foods.
The Portland, Oregon-born chef often interweaves community, sustainability and empowerment with the culinary, as demonstrated by her multidisciplinary work. More than a chef, Thomas (who’s been vegan now for about six and a half years) is a writer, contributing editor for Caldera Magazine (an experimental platform for BIPOC and queer voices) and co-founder of Breaking Bread NYC, a non-profit organization that partners with cooks to feed protestors, frontline workers and other community members. As Thomas tells us, eating plant-based catalyzed her holistic approach to food and food sovereignty.
“Learning about what’s in season, edible things you can forage and nature has always been very important to me,” she says. “I love that it’s accessible everywhere, that food is everywhere. I think we’ve all been, us in the West, conditioned to think food comes from a grocery store. We don’t know about these beautiful things just around us. That really inspires me—knowing that food is accessible and can be grown very easily by any individual.”
It’s not surprise then, that Thomas’ supper is fully vegan, using ingredients that celebrate what’s in peak season for spring. Snap peas, asparagus, pea tendrils, radishes and early tomatoes suffuse the menu, which consists of bright, crunchy and floral notes. “I want it to taste like a garden,” the chef explains. “There’ll be spring crudités. I know everyone’s doing one, but I think it’s so important in the spring because there’s so many beautiful things that taste delicious raw. So there’ll be other crunchy, blanched things with a whipped tahini and herbaceous oil.” Some surprising touches, like Cajun spices and umami notes, pepper the course to keep things refreshing and fun.
To taste like a fresh, spring garden, the menu doesn’t just use what’s in season but it does so sustainably and responsibly. For her supper, Thomas will source ingredients from farms and local, small gardens, including Ventura, Smallhold and potentially the Phoenix Community Garden, where Thomas volunteers. Food will also be sourced from Brooklyn Grange, where ingredients will be harvested and served the same day. “Plant-based is the future. It’s regenerative, especially if it’s from regenerative farms,” Thomas emphasizes.
One dish in particular represents this ethos. Consisting of braised kale, glazed trumpet mushrooms from Smallhold, additional seasonal and accessible ingredients and an earth sauce with kombu, the meal alludes to an article Thomas wrote for Atmos Magazine about how seaweed and kelp are important for regenerative, carbon-light eating.
Other intentional details throughout the supper focus on inclusivity and pay homage to ancestral roots. The dessert, a honey rum butter rice krispie, employs Ten to One Rum, the only Black-owned rum brand. Thomas elaborates, “I’m really excited because I love the idea of rice krispie treats. They feel very childish and fun and something you’d eat on a field trip. I wanted to incorporate that nostalgia and do a honey rum butter. I’m obsessed with Ten to One because they’re really focused on decolonizing and putting equity back into the community.”
On the other hand, a corn biscuit with whipped botanical butter recalls Thomas’ own lineage, as biscuits go back to her great grandmother who was obsessed with making them.
Like all of Supper Club’s experiences, Thomas’ dinner extends beyond food, engaging with the scenery, art and atmosphere to present cuisine as the culinary art it is. The Brooklyn Grange, the chef continues, does so by cultivating how dinner guests should approach the dinner: “A garden makes me feel at peace, and I really want to create moments of observation in the space.” Throughout the garden and dining area, art and sculptures curated by creative studio Pink Essay and their curator David Eardley will “create moments of presence and architecturally place people in the space and move them with intention,” says Thomas.
The night’s soundtrack—a playlist called Finding Myself, curated by Thomas’ friend Archie—translates the menu and location’s contributions. “I really feel like it’s an element of peace and exploration that will be played throughout the dinner,” Thomas tells us. She adds, “I collaborated with Redoux (a NYC-based line of scents and vegan skincare) and we have a thing we’re beta testing at events. It’s called a dining essence. It’s a spray of different herbs: lavender, cucumber, geranium and holy basil. It’s to apply to your aura, like onto your hands or your face, and it’s refreshing and it’s edible. Those will live on the table.”
The hope, Thomas says, is for people to feel “present with their food and an intimate connection with themselves through it. I think plants kind of allow that because it is lighter and the way you digest it feels like there’s a connection to yourself.” Ultimately, she concludes, “I hope that when people just come into this space it feels safe, like kind of an oasis.”
From the picturesque garden backdrop and mindful essence to the curated art and romantic, floral menu, chef Thomas creates an introspective experience that harmonizes on interconnectedness between plants and the future, nature and humans and each of us to one another.
Hero image of chef Emily Yuen and Bessou owner Maiko Kyogoku’s supper, by Walter Wlodarczyk; courtesy of Pioneer Works
