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Guests wear virtual reality headsets at a Studio ATAO dinner. The VR segments diners see are meant as cues to get them to talk about issues they might not otherwise discuss. Photo: Briana Balducci

Chef explores Asian-American identity with virtual reality dinner for Lunar New Year

  • At Los Angeles dinner, dishes and ingredients rich in symbolism, poetry, and VR interludes are meant as cues for guests to discuss issues close to their hearts
  • Chef Jenny Dorsey, a migrant from Shanghai who will prepare the Lunar New Year meal, intends it as a safe space where diners can open up about identity issues

Food has history, but does it have meaning? For Jenny Dorsey, founder of the Los Angeles-based non-profit culinary organisation Studio ATAO, it does. Dorsey, a chef, uses food to address the identity issues that Asian-Americans face by staging dinner events under the title “Asian in America”.

The events use virtual reality (VR) and poetry to inspire diners to discuss issues relevant to the Asian-American community as they eat. The dishes, and the cocktails prepared by husband Matt Dorsey, are carefully constructed to represent those issues in symbolic form.

For Lunar New Year, Studio ATAO – which stands for All Together At Once – is staging an event in Los Angeles at the Japanese American National Museum.

The aim of the dinner, as with others in the series, is to create an environment which prompts Asian-Americans to talk about issues – personal, social, or political – that are close to their hearts. The community is generally reticent about discussing such matters in public, she says.

“People are shy and uncomfortable in social situations,” says Dorsey, a first-generation immigrant from Shanghai. “They tend to talk about work, or the weather, rather than sensitive topics or identity issues. The dinners create a safe space where they can share their thoughts about such things at the table,” she says.

“I am an introvert and I don’t have the stamina to keep engaged as the evening wears on. There is always someone at the table who is an extrovert who dominates the conversation. So this is a way of levelling the playing field,” Dorsey adds.

Some people don’t want to engage – but they are all adults, and do not have to do anything that they don’t want to do. But for the most part, it’s been pretty positive
Jenny Dorsey

The dinners are tightly choreographed, and use VR, and poems that Dorsey has written, to suggest topics and keep the diners’ conversations on track.

“Every course has a topic, and diners are meant to discuss that topic, she says. “Three of the courses are paired with a VR component. The diners have a VR headset on and watch a re-creation of the dish that they are about to eat. Audio narration explains the idea behind the dish. The other three courses are presented with poems.

“The VR and the poems encapsulate the idea behind the dish, and introduce what we want the group to be talking about,” she says.

Each course at a Studio ATAO “Asians in America” dinner uses ingredients and presentation to stimulate conversation about an issue. The ‘Model Minority’ dish looks like a maze because “when you are a minority group, life is like trying to navigate a maze”, Jenny Dorsey says. Photo: ATAO

The dishes themselves are symbolic, she says. “I give them deeper meaning by my choice of ingredients, and by the way that they are cooked. For instance, the ‘Model Minority’ dish, which is course number 4, talks about the model minority myth, and every part of the dish addresses that,” she says.

The model minority myth refers to a stereotypical view of Asian-Americans as polite, law-abiding, hard-working at school, and always successful in their chosen careers. Although it’s a positive representation, the community has come to resent such stereotyping. The stereotype also causes problems for those who perhaps aren’t good at school, or don’t achieve a high level of success at work.

“The dish looks like a maze,” Dorsey says. “That’s because when you are a minority group, life is like trying to navigate a maze.” It features veal sweetbreads, which Dorsey says are a good metaphor for the Asian-American experience. Sweetbreads are offal, and therefore often looked down upon but, served in a certain way, perhaps with a thick sauce, they become gourmet dishes.

A diner photographs a dish at a Studio ATAO dinner. Photo: Stacey Salter Moore

“This is a parallel to the Asian-American experience,” Dorsey says. “You have to present yourself in a certain way, you have to show yourself in a certain way, you have to say certain things to be accepted, even though you feel that’s not really who you are.”

Other courses are entitled “Substitutions, You make Asian food, right?”, and “Stereotypes”, and address issues such as cultural hierarchies and the lack of individualism granted to minorities. A cocktail called “Egg & Bananas” inspires conversations about the way these terms are used in the Asian-American community, Dorsey notes.

Each food item is meant to start a conversation on the table. “Some of the dishes are particular to me, and are connected to my identity because I grew up eating them, like sweet and sour sauce. But other people might not identify with that, so I try to find a bit of something that will make sense to everybody.”

Chef Jenny Dorsey. “I’ll start with an idea and then think about what food makes sense to use, or what kind of ingredients would be relevant,” she says. Photo: Dion Trinidad

When it comes to creating the dishes, Dorsey comes up with the concept first, she says. “I’ll start with an idea and then think about what food makes sense to use, or what kind of ingredients would be relevant. There are stories to food that people know and understand immediately. and the ingredients themselves have a story.”

The VR element, during which the dinner guests put on headsets between courses, is a useful way of inspiring conversations, she says.

The 360-degree videos feature animations of the dishes made with Tilt Brush, an application that makes it look like the dish is creating itself. “It feels like it’s being cooked as you watch it. The audio narration explains the symbolism behind it. The participants discuss what they have heard after they have eaten it,” Dorsey says.

Guests wear virtual reality headsets at a Studio ATAO dinner. Each VR segment is designed to spark conversation about a particular issue. Photo: Briana Balducci

She says diners have generally responded well to the cues, and have discussed the topics raised by the food, the VR, the poems, and the cocktails. “I think that people have mainly talked about topics that they would not usually have talked about with people that they don’t know,” says Dorsey.

“They share things that have happened to them that they would usually keep to themselves, and they find out new things about people that they know. Some people don’t want to engage – but they are all adults, and do not have to do anything that they don’t want to do. But for the most part, it’s been pretty positive,” she says.

The “Asian in America” dinners, which cost between US$125 and US$175 to attend, are six-course and three-cocktail events. There are usually between 25 and 50 guests, and they take place in public-facing spaces such as museums and cultural centres, as well as at film festivals.

For the Lunar New Year event at the Japanese American National Museum, “we can’t change the content much, because of the VR component. But we will be making adaptations to suit the theme”, Dorsey says.

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