“In Tutuola’s universe...Both reality and the universe are imbued with endless possibilities of being and becoming, thanks to the multiplicity of consciousness available to inhabit them. Things, words, deeds and beings are always incomplete, not because of absences but because of their possibilities.” - Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the Currency of Conviviality
The first time I ever tried Takowasabi was the 23rd of November last year at a party. The chef manager brought forth this snacking fare as we were celebrating the homebound trajectory of one of our own line cooks. 12 of us were sitting at low wooden tables. Chef had prepped small servings of the following hits: savoury earthy edamame, golden french-fries, sweet potato chips and Asahi pints on tap. Having whet our appetites, Chef then introduced what became the balm to the affect of acute heartsickness we all seemed to feel, tsubukko takowasabi served with edible seaweed. One crunchy fold, one tiny bite, and I was ineligible for the dry eyed goodbye committee.
Someone brought out a music speaker as the conversation ebb and flowed into anime theme songs from 2001, a time before I watched TV. I learned that Family Mart, a popular supermarket chain in Japan, has branding colours that resemble Sierra Leone's flag only inverted. The coincidence of both cultures being struck by the same visual concept was worth a good chuckle, and later into the night we ended things with a speech from our comrade who was leaving.
For another night before his visa ended, the cook belonged here with us. Just like that his temporary belonging was over.
Dining experiences, common, varied and nuanced as they are in Toronto, are possible of a great many interpretations given the many traditions of food that are available. That multiplicity has been a point of inspiration to many restaurant interior design themes, both singular in origin like the ethiopian cuisine of Lalibela and the growing historiography of counterfactual "fusion-cuisine" like the recently closed Momofuku Toronto.
Eating is a complex simplicity. There are comfort foods and there are food adventures, and the majority of folx oscilate between those two registers of hunger all the time. These two examples intensify a kind of helpful relief pattern, one that contours the consumption of food as a conscious site of cultural inscription, changing everday with the availability of ingredients and shifting urban density. The regeneration of life-cycles is a design problem in the complex ecology of an urban foodsystem. The hospitality industry is one answer to that, food and beverage conspiring as a celebration of belonging.
I stopped writing in 2021 shortly before I travelled back to Toronto. Living in Nairobi, I made myself busy helping friends with their masters thesis and small contributions of research with colleagues. closer to the day, I found it incredibly hard to hold onto this creative practice because anticipation of leaving, a feeling of change was a huge weight on my spirit that loosened my grip on almost every other thing.
I've come to know design writing as a potent dream work, and for a long time i have pursued this meaning very personally aside from the professional settings i've been able to practice in. I have always found purposeful challenge in comprehending our world from a designed vantage point, with the attended sociality - slow, deliberate and reiterative - required to shape human spaces that can hold our hearts, minds and bodies.
Returning to Turtle Island three years ago and changing careers as I did, I was certain that i would return to design writing. I wasnt sure when but it was important to go about this new work interest the honest way, seeking fun, and work my way up from the bottom.
I remember having a conversation with the exec chef early on at my first restaurant about work life balance, and progressing up the matrix of culinary professionalism. He related to me that the reality of engaging in culinary arts to an elite level is a life woth of devotion. Greatness as this community defines it takes a great deal. This fact only changes after the average 5-10 year time/experience it takes to mature and turn restaurant business relationships into collaboration and community.
The blue collar path of hardwork is no easy path, and when challenges arose i always gave myself the benefit of the doubt that i belonged there. For all i knew about cooking 9 months in, I was more than worth the space i took up, more than the effort and the time i gave to earn the turf and hold up the responsibilities of a collaborator in the kitchen, way more than the wage i earned.
Cooking is an art of surmounting challenges. The conditions of discipline and consistency that service demanded of me molded my creative persona in ways i couldnt have imagined. My promotion from dishpit to second cook was a change only brought more challenges to surmount. Practising this form of cultural production to a high level was a confirmation of my abilities and powerful self-belief. My desire for enjoyment had been fulfilled. I then had to make the journey back to the world of my ambitions prior to cooking.
A journey to and from a sense of belonging is both personal like a family restaurant or curio shop, and impersonal like the idea of an finding oneself the subject of an archive (1), or a classical canon in the case of normative identities in the world. In the tutuola-esque terms, You may have to go and meet it and sometimes It may have to come meet you.
I consider myself privileged because I have long been able to dwell with the subject matter of my writing. As a diasporic Black person, it is an accident of history to be sure. However, in hindsight the co-extension of subject and subject matter is a balance that i can now replicate in the present when i travel to other parts of the world that call to my sense of belonging.
Belonging is a kind of listening, an absorbtion of energy, a receptivity to life. Indeed, as definitive as it is of the human experience, belonging carries both political and ethical meaning. A sense of belonging is the pointer in the compass of any human pursuit, and belonging as a design writer points me in all sorts of directions, even away from it at times when i dont feel like i belong. When the contemporary forces of capitalism, imperialism and colonization of the present day world act upon my daily life choices, trigger my nervous system, and give me pause, my senses are threatened with being dampened to beauty that continues under such conditions.
Moving back to Toronto 3 years ago, my compass pointed me away from design writing as i had known it in Nairobi, Kenya. Now at a pause in my professional culinary journey, my compass points me back again to design writing. Something familiar in a new place.
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1.
In Conversation: Cecily Nicholson and Jordan Abel: Poetry, private archives, intergenerational trauma and accountability. "As we've talked about before however, "the archive" from some vantages is not accessible, has been erased, is illegible, is framed in ways that are profoundly violent or insulating or never formed in the first place. At best it will always be incomplete." The query is very salient in describing the consciousness in an archive, especially regards the normative orientation towards Indigenous and Black aesthetics and culture.
https://rungh.org/in-conversation-cecily-nicholson-and-jordan-abel/