Shubalakshmi Shekar (& more to be announced!) • Kitchen Table Conversations: An evening of collective memories on food and home

How do you say ‘rice’ in your language?

What is a cherished memory of a dish from your childhood?

Describe a kitchen object that’s passed on in your family, or your dining space.

Any hand-written recipe from your loved ones?

Kitchen Table is an anthology of recipes and stories as shared by current residents of Metro Detroit. It traces memories of food and childhood from many homes, showing a glimpse into the everyday lives of families across cultures and cuisines. Compiled by Shuba (Shubalakshmi) Shekar, the book asks a deceptively simple question: what memories of food and childhood spaces do you carry with you as you navigate the idea of home. 

At Kitchen Table Conversations, Shuba will introduce the ideas behind Kitchen Table to San Francisco with a reading, and invitea few guests from the local community into a conversation about their own memories of food and home, guided by prompts drawn from the questions the book itself asks. The audience can also participate by bringing a story of their own- memories of a cherished recipe, an object from their kitchen, or anything that symbolises the idea of home and food.

Shubalakshmi (Shuba) Shekar is a multidisciplinary artist, food storyteller, and creative researcher working at the intersection of food, memory, and narratives of home. Kitchen Table is her first publication. She is currently based in the Bay Area and is working on setting up her creative practice around food and memories, annam&friends.

Kitchen Table is a collaborative cookbook and storytelling project bringing together recipes and personal narratives from people currently living in Metro Detroit. The project began as a research inquiry into home, nostalgia, and the ways food carries memory across migration and everyday life.

Developed through community participation, the book collects over 50 recipes alongside stories of childhood, family kitchens, and the cities that shaped people's identities. Rather than treating recipes as static instructions, the project positions them as lived archives—where food becomes a way of remembering, translating, and preserving personal and collective histories.

Through conversations, submissions, and gatherings, Kitchen Table explores how diasporic communities construct a sense of home through food, especially when living away from where they grew up. The project culminates in a printed publication that acts as both archive and social space, bringing together fragments of lived experience through cooking.