Food Gatherings & Community Events

Annam Dinners is a series of intimate, home-style dinner experiences exploring food, memory, and cultural exchange. The word annam in Tamil refers to cooked rice, often understood as nourishment and a form of everyday wealth received through food.

The dinners are rooted in Shuba's personal food history, shaped by her upbringing across Palakkad and Mumbai—where Tamil Brahmin culinary traditions coexist with Maharashtrian street food and everyday home cooking. These layered influences form the foundation for vegetarian, home-style menus that are shared in a communal setting, like chaat and vada pav, alongside everyday dishes like rasam and sambar.

Each dinner is structured as a multi-course experience, where dishes are introduced through their cultural and personal context. Hosted in small, family-style gatherings, the meals become spaces for storytelling, where guests are also invited to reflect on their own food memories through prompts and postcards.

Alongside solo dinners, the project has also evolved through collaborations, including cross-cultural menus such as Indian–Chinese dinner experiences, where different culinary traditions are brought into conversation through shared preparation and dining.

Soup for the Soul is a community-based food project that brings together soups from different cultural traditions as a way of exploring shared practices of care, nourishment, and home. What began as an informal conversation between friends developed into a recurring public gathering centered around cooking, storytelling, and collective exchange.

Each edition features a range of soups inspired by different cuisines—from Polish and African to Chinese and Mediterranean—highlighting how a simple dish can hold deep cultural variation and personal meaning. The project is collaboratively designed and executed, with each participant contributing both food and narrative.

Alongside food preparation, the gatherings function as spaces for dialogue, where participants learn about one another's culinary practices and lived experiences. The project also incorporates a charitable component, using food as a means to support community needs while fostering connection and shared learning.

Soup for the Soul explores how everyday dishes can become vehicles for cultural exchange, allowing people to encounter differences through something as familiar as a shared meal.