Viewpoint Archives — The Common Table

Farmacy’s Manifesto

12. May 2026
3 minute read

A self-published handbook from a Notting Hill vegan restaurant might seem an unlikely vehicle for a radical food systems manifesto, but Farmacy's Manifesto on the Future of Food makes a compelling, if imperfect, case for regenerative agriculture and the urgent need to rethink how “we” feed ourselves.

Photo © Rachel Tan, courtesy Ivan Brehm & Nouri restaurant

Remove the Arbiters of Taste

1. May 2026
14 minute read

Michelin-starred chef Ivan Brehm worked at Per Se, Mugaritz, and The Fat Duck, before opening his own restaurant, Nouri, in Singapore in 2017. He shares his thoughts about artifice, agency, and the unsustainable game fine dining has become.

Food is Political

14. April 2026
14 minute read

BBC Food Programme presenter Sheila Dillon has spent four decades establishing food as an important, newsworthy subject and breaking big political stories through the lens of food.

Can You Feel The Force?

7. April 2026
7 minute read

From me to we: a biocosmic metaphor in a speculative meditation on humans and holobionts, microbes and midichlorians, Star Wars and storytelling by Sophie Lovell. May the Force be with us.

people sittimg together at a dinner table

Through the Lens of Food

20. January 2026
12 minute read

Journalist Nathan Thornburgh is the co-founder and publisher of Roads & Kingdoms. He also worked closely with Anthony Bourdain on the Explore Parts Unknown series and the travel podcast The Trip. Here he talks to The Common Table about print as self-care and how food can form the soul.

Eating Dirt

9. December 2025
8 minute read

Dr masharu is an artist and the founder of the Museum of Edible Earth in Amsterdam. They also like to eat dirt. The Common Table talked to them about geophagy, fetishes, cultural taboos and cultural norms.

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.