Viewpoint Archives — The Common Table

The Living Recipe

24. November 2025
10 minute read

Chef, writer, student, father, Nathan Farrell addresses the received wisdom of the recipe in formal culinary education. He calls for a decolonised food literacy taught in a way that remembers without freezing and transforms without erasing.

A Taste for Microplastics

17. November 2025
10 minute read

Microplastic pollution expert Dr Sherri Mason talks to The Common Table about the pervasive presence of tiny plastic particles within the planet’s ecosystems and why we are being encouraged to keep adding more, not less, of them to our food and soils.

Food Design, It’s Complicated

6. August 2025
17 minute read

Can Food Design improve our relationships with food or is it just a grandiose term for decorative plating? Leading voices in Food & Design, Priya Mani, Sonia Massari, Fabio Parasecoli, Laila Snevele, and Sophie Lovell confer at a communal table moderated by our own Orlando Lovell.

still from the documentary The Edible Indian by Cass Gardiner showing a Native American family sharing a meal in a forest

The Good Life

10. July 2025
20 minute read

First Nations filmmaker and curator Cass Gardiner talks to The Common Table about stewardship, reciprocity, the bittersweet aspect of "home", and how she uses food to open a window for non-Native people into her world and community.

Change the (Design) System

1. June 2025
8 minute read

A conversation with Systems Change Designer Ashley Scarborough about how she redesigned her own professional path and found food systems as her medium.

Water Buffalo herd wallowing in hot springs

The Capacity to Evoke

17. February 2025
10 minute read

Food and food systems are emerging as a vital focus of investigative cultural practice. The Common Table talked to curator Meriç Öner, former Director of Salt in Istanbul, who brings her unique perspective to the intersection of food, culture and art.

Gastronativism: Us & Them

1. February 2025
12 minute read

Food Studies professor Fabio Parasecoli on gastronativism, the "ideological use of food in politics to advance ideas about who belongs to a community". A conversation about "us", "them", food, politics, and systemic thinking.

Gut Feeling

21. November 2024
9 minute read

Dr Vanessa Kimbell is a sourdough baker. educator and food activist. She talks to The Common Table about her very personal healing journey with sourdough, which led to her mission to change systems in the food industry.

Food Thinking

28. May 2024
10 minute read

Design thinking is no longer fit for purpose. How can design be practised more relationally and inclusively, mindful of complexity and inequality? Through food thinking and asking better questions, says Sophie Lovell, co-founder of The Common Table.