Welcome to Slow Cooking, a new multimedia podcast about all things food, art-making, social politics and environmentalism. This conversation with Sonia Sandhu was recorded at Theatre in the Mill (Bradford, UK) and is published in three different formats: Video, Audio and Text.

For this interview, we are joined by Bradford’s own chef and artist extraordinaire, Sonia Sandhu. We started by going around traditional shops in town, and then spent the day in Sonia’s kitchen, preparing and cooking together, before traveling to the the wonderful Theatre in the Mill, to share the food with our audience and guests, and to continue the threads of conversations around Sonia’s own history and relationship with food-practices, her own heritage and how food impacts her creative practice. 

Theatre in the Mill sits right bang in the centre of Bradford and the University grounds. Bradford is, in my humble opinion, a city of delights. From its multicultural communities, to its rich history of migration and trade between peoples. It was also here that the independent Labour Party started, in 1983. It is, in my opinion, the best town in the UK for food! In the city, you can find food from various communities, such as desert parlours, massala fish and chips, to Fish Karahi, or Tom Kah. All seemingly made with love, care, and a deep respect for the food’s history, context and flavour.

If you’ve ever tasted Sonia’s iconic food and learned about her approach to it, you won’t easily forget how the taste lingers, and how it blends itself to your taste buds. I still smile when I remember the taste of that aubergine! 

To access the other formats and episodes, simply follow this link: https://performingborders.live/commissions/slow-cooking/

Bom apetite 👩🏼‍🍳🥣

Interview

Meal: Baingan Bharta, Coconut dhal, Tamarind mint & date chutney, Rice

XAVIER: (to the audience) This is ‘Slow Cooking’. We’ve had these incredible foods
prepared very generously to us by our guest Sonia. So, let us bathe in the smells, the taste of the food
and each other’s bodies in this space. Let us bond and move in the rhythms of the voices at the table. Bom apetite.

SONIA: Should we help ourselves?

XAVIER: Yes!

SONIA: So, do you remember my serving suggestion?

XAVIER: No, you have to tell me.

SONIA: Okay, so we’ve got rice first. And then dahl on top.

XAVIER: Do you want to talk to us a little bit about the food and why you chose this one today specifically?

SONIA: Yeah. So, I’ve chosen a few different recipes. I mean, you might have guessed that I’m Indian. I know there are a few people here who know me personally, and they know that I’m Indian. Yes. I’ve picked an Indian menu.

Rice is a staple dish as part of the Indian subcontinent. I’ve picked lentils, dahl dish,
which, again, is a staple of my family. This specific dahl that I’ve made draws on flavours that I enjoy of Kerala and my time spent in the south of India. So, yeah, just to say that, I’m like a northern Indian person. My family are Punjabi, but I like to make Indian food, which draws on flavours and ingredients
from all across India, in general.

And then the aubergine dish, which is called baingan bharta. That’s my mom’s favourite dish, and as a kid, I was always so fascinated how she would burn this oil to smoking point and pour it over the hot coal, put it inside the dish and let it absorb all the flavours.

Yeah, and aubergine is one of my favourite vegetables. And I really like the sort of tanginess
that tamarind and date chutney bring. It’s a recipe from my grandma, and I think sometimes people are, ‘Oh, what’s your authentic recipe?’, but it’s genuinely… It’s tamarind chutney from a jar blended with fresh dates.

I’ve grown the mint, which is a nice touch, but sometimes my grandma just uses mint jelly that you buy from Morrisons. So…

XAVIER: I respect that.

SONIA: I think it’s really nice to have the soft rice and coconutty flavour, more of a spicy aubergine dish, and then the freshness from the coriander, tanginess from the tamarind.

XAVIER: For those of you who don’t know, we spent a day together cooking this. The first thing that we did was we went to the local shops that Sonia often goes to buy the ingredients from. And she knows everyone, and everyone knows her.

And throughout the week, actually in Bradford, I kept telling people that we met, or that we went to buy food from or buy things from, and I kept saying that we’re doing these events with. And they were like, ‘With Sonia Sandhu?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ With Sonia. The Sonia Sandhu.

SONIA: Oh, god…

XAVIER: And I just wondered about your relationship… You have such a strong relationship with
this town, right? But I wonder how this food, for instance, what is your relationship to it in relation to this town and how has it changed, you know?

SONIA: Well, like I mentioned, the recipes that I’ve picked are what my family has been making for a long time. The high street that we went to buy the ingredients from is Oak Lane, which is around the corner from where I live. And yeah, when my grandparents and my young parents, they were like seven, eight-year-olds when they moved to Bradford, that would sort of be the main high street.

That was, like, three or four corner shops on that street where they would go to buy certain spices, vegetables, herbs that they couldn’t buy in supermarkets. So yeah, for me, it feels like
a really nice, sort of full circle moment to, like, now live around the corner from that high street, which is now my local sort of shopping high street.

I didn’t kind of think it would play out that way, but yeah, here we are. And yeah, on that high street now, it’s so nice to kind of see more shops emerging. Those four corner shops still exist there, but, like, it’s been their sons and grandsons, which have now taken over those family businesses.

And that’s such a nice parallel for me to be like the second and third generation in my family, to still be going and buying those ingredients there. Yeah, so I feel like maybe not much has changed.

XAVIER: For your family, though?…

SONIA: Yeah. Well, for my family, I feel like they… To buy these types of ingredients because they’re more widely available now, they probably are more likely to nip to Tesco or whatever because they’ve, moved away from that area. So, I’ve more specifically moved to an area where it’s back-to-back terraces, where traditionally Punjabi, Pakistani migrant families moved to and lived in that type of housing because it was affordable.

Yeah, I mean, my mum lives in a part of Bradford now where she’s worked her way up, and it’s a bigger house than mine. And she has no mortgage and she’s not going to nip back to Manningham
to buy these ingredients. But for me as a renter, as an artist, artist wage… Yeah, for me, it’s a nice full circle moment to still be buying ingredients from there because I remember the stories of, like,

‘Oh, when we first moved here, we would, like, go to this shop.’ And… Yeah, that’s where I’ve come
today to buy these ingredients. How is it?

XAVIER: Come on… you know, there’s a little kick with a sauce… It just comes in, like, two or three seconds after you put it in your mouth. It’s just like perfect, you know.

SONIA: That’s my intention. I like it when you maybe feel the milder flavours of the coconut
and the curry leaves, cardamom… and then it builds to that spicier kick.

XAVIER: Is the kick important for you?

SONIA: Oh yeah.

XAVIER: Why?

SONIA: Well, it’s not Indian food if you don’t have the kick.

XAVIER: Just to touch a little bit on the relationship that your family has with food
is slightly different from yours, no? Has it changed the way you make food?
Has it changed from your family?

SONIA: I feel like my family will have made very traditional recipes as a way of, I think, holding on to their culture. As migrant communities to teach specific dahl recipes, or sabji recipes, like, cooked
vegetable recipes to their daughters in law, their daughters to make them become
nice Indian housewives. Which I am not.

I feel like with my relationship with food, I wouldn’t say growing up I was necessarily very interested in Indian food. I think moving to a country where I think it’s… I don’t know, I don’t know. So, many of you might relate to this, but if you’re not white in the school scenario and you’ve got something different in your lunchbox, you kind of don’t want to bring that food to school. You want to just kind of want to have, like, the pizza, pasta, chips, whatever people are having as part of their school dinners, and not have anything in your lunchbox or in your food that makes you stand out or makes you feel different. Yeah.

So, I did have a complicated relationship with Indian food, specifically as a child. Moving on from when I went to university and moved out, it was like these amazing flavours, like, masala mixes and the slow cooking of onions, garlic. It’s that familiarity that, like, brought me back to wanting to cook with Asian flavours again.

But yeah, I would say that my style of cooking is more influenced through travelling in South India. Travelling to Mexico and bringing different sorts of spices and condiments to Indian dishes, which my family don’t really cook with now.

XAVIER: Do you cook for them?

SONIA: Now and again. But yeah, I feel like my mum’s and my grandma’s recipes are always, like, classic Punjabi amazing dishes. But I’m like, well, why don’t we try adding, yeah, different types of vegetables to this? Or like, there’s some nasturtiums growing in the garden. Can we, like, add that because it tastes peppery?… It might be a nice topping for it, for example. So, I feel like I’m pushing the boundaries a little bit more with my family’s traditional recipes.

XAVIER: And was it important for you to make those changes as a sort of an ownership into…

SONIA: Yeah, definitely because growing up in Bradford and you know, having that complicated relationship with food of not really wanting to… I don’t know how to phrase it. Yeah. Complicated relationship in terms of, like, not feeling Indian food. You felt like too spicy or like wanting to be white, essentially. Like, just wanting to have food that didn’t make me feel different or othered. So, yeah, kind of reclaiming that in a way and building my own relationship with it has been important.

XAVIER: Is there, like, special, specific recipe that people are always like, ‘Sonia, can you do that one?’

SONIA: I mean people tend to really enjoy my dahl. That’s the reason I am making it, because…

XAVIER: Fair enough.

SONIA: You know, my dahl has been my own creation in a way.

XAVIER: Really?

SONIA: When you talk about dahl in general, like, there is a million different varieties, different recipes that people and their families have come up with. Mine is, like really drawn on my own influences from, like, traveling in Kerala. I’m a North Indian, but I really do enjoy the flavours of South India. So, like, more delicate balances of flavours, more like fragrant spices. Like, cardamom and fennel, adding a fresh curry leaves. Using coconut adds creaminess. So, yeah, this is soft of recipe that I’ve developed myself really over the years. With the variety of herbs and spices that I like. But yeah, this is one that people do tend to like.

XAVIER: We were talking earlier about expectations. And as a chef, as well as an artist and a cultural producer, I wonder if there’s perhaps when you create an event, there might be some expectations
that you kind of have to cater for?

SONIA: Sorry. I was, like, lost in the flavour of the chutney.

XAVIER: I mean, understandable… Understandable. We were talking about expectations, and when you make something that people expect, or you’re like you are of Indian descent, so you’re going to have this sort of specific flavour or specific type of cuisine, right? Do you feel that and how do you work to subvert that?

SONIA: Yeah, I guess, like, sometimes you might. Bradford is like super well known for its curry houses.

XAVIER: Yeah. It was the first thing you took me to when we arrived.

SONIA: Yeah. I mean, you picked the restaurant.

XAVIER: Oh, shit.

SONIA: You were already there… If people have been to curry houses, they think that’s the type of food that you cook at home, which is not the truth. Like, no one really makes naan at home if you’re Indian. That’s definitely, like, a curry house invention.

XAVIER: Things like Masala fish and chips…

SONIA: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like, we don’t really cook that kind of stuff at home. It’s a restaurant sort of invention, which is through the British Raj, colonialism, that sort of lens of, yeah, the British Raj. That sort of take on what Indian food is. But it’s not the type of stuff that we make at home. And then I guess there’s also the assumption, like, if you’ve got a dahl recipe or, like, even a baingan bharta recipe, that it might be the same across all of India, but it’s not. Like, the spice mix, even, like, down to the garam masala, which I feel like in supermarkets, you just buy it in a little plastic pack. There’s going to be these set spices that are in it. But when you actually look at what people make at home, you know, you can make it with a bit more fennel, a bit more cardamom if you are, like, in more South Indian states, there’s like more cardamom in it. They might even add some like dried, desiccated coconut to it.

Depending on where you’re at, there’s always going to be a variety. And I’ve forgotten your question…

XAVIER: No, it’s just about expectations and we were talking about how we subvert it… I mean, I guess we’re talking about you and cultural positions of migration and how we become, I guess, a sort of a representation of a culture that people then expect us to behave or to present ourselves in a specific way, you know? Do you feel like that is part of people’s understanding of you as a chef?

SONIA: I feel like not particularly with my practice, because I’ve not worked in that conventional thing of, like, running, well, working in a curry house, that they tend to be like migrant male chefs who work in curry houses. But my practice as a chef, I mean, I used to run a café in Bradford where I wanted to always change up the menu. It was very sort of like lefty, it was a worker’s cooperative. As a queer Punjabi woman, my sort of practice of, like, bringing people together over food is, yeah, it’s not about being a nice Indian housewife or anything like that, or cooking when it’s expected of you.

I feel like me as a chef, sometimes it does feel like, just because I’m an Indian woman, that’s not why I’m into cooking or why I’m a chef. Because I guess growing up, getting back into that sort of complicated relationship with food, and maybe why I was disconnected from the food from my culture was because I kind of saw my mom, my grandma, cooking for the men in the family, and they would eat last almost.

That’s not what I’m about. I remember always kind of thinking that that’s fucking bullshit. Like, everyone should just be equal. Why are we not eating together?… But my practices as a chef is about kind of flipping that…

Catering for drag kings like I did with Alice, who is sat over there (points to audience) she did a residency with drag kings and I made a feast at the end of their residency called ‘A Feast for Kings’, which was so gorgeous. Just catering amazing, delicious food for queer people to share together.

And then also more personally, I suppose, with trying to bring my queer South Asian friends together when it’s Diwali, or the Vaisakhi, Christmas… everyone is invited to bring a dish from their family
where they might not have sat in that space with their actual family, blood relatives. But we’re all kind of bringing those dishes and sharing them together in a sort of queer space where you do have to hide parts of your identity like…. ‘you’re Indian, and this is your food. It’s fine. Like, you’re a guy. You can make the chapatis.’ That’s fine.

XAVIER: Really…

SONIA: Yeah. Like, my friend Noble is amazing at making chapatis. Like, we usually delegate him to do that whilst we are chilling. So, yeah. I hope that answers your question.

XAVIER: Absolutely. It does. So, you’ve mentioned about doing, creative projects and artistic projects, right? And you are both a chef and also, I feel that that is a big part of your creative persona, your creative outlet. So, my question… I guess I’m interested in discovering how first you went into being a chef, what made you kind of like, ‘Oh, this is what I want to pursue from a career.’

SONIA: Yeah, well, I mean, the art section sort of came afterwards. So, it was around 2015 when I tried
to do, like, Veganuary for a month. So, Veganuary, not everyone has heard of it. It’s like trying to be on a vegan diet for a month. And it was that specifically that really brought out a crazy flare in my cooking.

Because all of a sudden, I was trying to emulate all these flavours and textures, but without having meat products, dairy products to hand. So, trying to experiment with cashew nuts and different beans and pulses applying the same sort of marinades that you might do to a piece of fish or meat. But to use like, tofu, which is great if you marinate it, and chickpeas. Things like that. So, that’s how I really got into cooking. It was around 2015.

And yeah, I feel like I was quite experimental with the food that I made. I would share it with friends and family and they sort of like kind of said ‘Oh, you should try like having food stalls at all these vegan events,’ which I did do. When I look back now at some of the menus, the dishes that I served, it’s a bit cringy because I have, like, a cake topped popcorn and like dyed bright blue next to a bowl of pakoras
and samosas. And it just didn’t really make sense. I was just like, serving all these random dishes.

Yeah, but then I just kind of found in Bradford, more specifically, that there were lots of people running bars, like the ‘Brick Box’, ‘Bradford Brewery’…. People up in ‘South Square’ if they were going to have
an exhibition launch, they wanted, like, new and exciting food as part of it. So, I started just doing, like, pop-ups which were themed around exhibition launches. My friend Deepak, he used to like deejay,
with South Asian vinyl, alongside me serving my take on Indian street food at the time.

And yeah, that kind of got me more known around Bradford as serving vegetarian and plant forward vegan food. The vegan diet specifically just made me more interested in, like, how to make food more exciting or how to achieve these certain textures without those easy things, like, reaching towards
cream or dairy because… Yeah, you need to kind of make that through nuts, through, like, coconut cream and things like that. So, that got me more into cooking.

I feel like I’ve always been creative, but, like, I never really had the chance to pursue creative subjects. So, I feel like experimenting with what food looks like on the plate, like visually. I like to think about the colours, as well. So, it’s my… I think it’s my sort of creative outlet is how, what the food looks like, as well as how it tastes.

XAVIER: It’s interesting, actually. Just to touch on food appearance… We went to three shops today. Three, four shops?

SONIA: I think three

XAVIER: Three shops. In the first that we went to, which is the shop that we wanted to buy
everything from, I guess the first appearance is, like, this is a bit messy in the layout, but actually, it’s really perfectly layout because it’s really inviting, right? And you have a food that might not have
the same appearance as vegetables and fruits that you will find in, like, Tesco’s.

SONIA: Right?

XAVIER: But it’s much more appealing because it’s actually real appearance, you know what I mean? But then we went to the other shop that had food in plastic bags, like, individually wrapped in plastic bags, and it was perfectly laid out, right? And I remember one of the first conversations we had about food was about that.

SONIA: Yes

XAVIER: About how people expect the food that they are served and that they find in the supermarket to have a certain appearance. Is that important for you as a chef to kind of counteract?

SONIA: Yes, in terms of… I mean, I do always want the food to not look like a mess, I don’t know. I do think about, like, the colour palette and the different sort of textures that you’re putting on the plate. But in terms of, like, where you buy your produce, I think the conversation you’re referring to is when you were in my kitchen a couple of days ago, and I was showing you the wonky veg box that I ordered. With that, it just kind of depends on what’s in season, what’s been rejected from supermarkets.

But I was showing you the carrots. I wish I’d kept them, but I cooked them. They were like a little, stubby ones. Like, why is that being rejected from a supermarket?

XAVIER: Exactly!

SONIA: A beautiful pineapple…. I have no idea again, why that’s been rejected from a supermarket… I really agree with what you’re saying about that first shop that we went to because they didn’t really care
what the display looked like. It was, like, a box of tomatoes on top of a box of onions.

XAVIER: They had some watermelons.

SONIA: We bought some watermelon. I forgot to bring it.

XAVIER: We bought watermelons for a pound!

SONIA: I left it in my kitchen. Sorry.

XAVIER: Is it?

SONIA: Yeah.

XAVIER: I’ll come and get it tomorrow. But I mean, it was a pound… Come on.

SONIA: Yeah… and you can do that knock test on it. And you know that it’s…

XAVIER: It’s perfect.

SONIA: It’s perfect. But, yeah, like you said, I think it’s super inviting when you see that because the guy was out front, he was like, ‘Oh, hi! Are you going to come in? You are gonna buy this stuff?’ Like, we were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, of course.’ And then, on the flip side, we went to the other shop where you had literally aubergines, which have got their own protective skin on them. They did not need to be wrapped in plastic, but they were.

XAVIER: They were. They were perfectly laid out, and they were all perfect. There was not a single, like, I don’t know, bad thing about that aubergine, do you know what I mean? Like, not a single, like, I don’t know, it was, like, a bit weird.

SONIA: The bad thing was the plastic that it was wrapped in.

XAVIER: Yeah. That’s true, actually.

SONIA: But I mean, like I say, I do think that there is an element of me wanting my food to look appealing. And yeah, I feel like more recently I did, like, a training course in vegan patisserie, and I am really interested in, like, making food look super beautiful. But I would never really be interested in, like, making money off that in a way. If I’ve been commissioned to work on a project where I can make it look nice and it’s given away at a reasonable price, or pay as you feel, or free… I’m about that, but I don’t really agree with, like, paying 150 pounds for a tasting menu where you have to pay for your food to look beautiful. Like, natural ingredients as they exist are beautiful.

XAVIER: And you do a lot of pop-up events, right?

SONIA: Not for a while, though. It’s nice to do this. But you also started to do pop-up events in creative outlets, in creative spaces that allow you to bring food into them and kind of treat that as a creative pursuit.

XAVIER: How did that start?

SONIA: So, the first time I feel like I’ve talked about how I started working with food and then run a café and all of that, and did some pop-ups. But it was around 2018 where I was invited to work with Commonwealth Theatre Company, based in Bradford, on a project called ‘Radical Acts’ that was bringing together different women from different ages and backgrounds, who spoke various different languages, across from Bradford to perform in this play about the sort of trauma that they might have experienced, or like struggles that they might have gone through.

I was like, oh, I’m an associate artist on this because I’ve worked across various charity projects and generally get on with people. But I was like, ‘But I’m also really into cooking,’ so why don’t I just, like,
make lunch every day for everyone? So, I did that as part of the project. I feel like in that sort of R&D period when we were making the show, we would do all these drama games when we were making the show to help people. It would encourage people to try and bond and develop what would be the final script for the performance.

But I found that when everyone kind of sat down to share the food, that’s when people
kind of let go of any sort of guard that they might have built up, or any expectations that they might have felt in the space… Like, ‘if I’m doing a drama exercise, this is what I need to be saying’. As soon as they shared lunch together, that all of sort of fell away, and people were just real with each other.

So, we had like a whole month of R&D. Here at Theatre at The Mill, actually. It was all downstairs.

XAVIER: Really?

SONIA: And it was that sort of conversation and content that actually led to the final performance, which was actually set around dinner tables that we had. The performers sat around a table, and the audiences were invited to come and sit with them, share pakoras that we’d made, and that was all part of the show. For me, that really opened my eyes to like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ Like, food used in a creative way is part of the theatre performance or is part of an installation artwork, like… Yeah, it was just like a bit of
a light bulb moment. So, that was the sort of the first project that I worked on where food was a central part…

XAVIER: The first time I met you was in 2018, as well. It was 2017 or 2018.

SONIA: It might have been 2017… when I was still working at ‘Bread and Roses’. Yeah, I finished the shift. I did all the closing checks in the kitchen, and I got to meet you.

XAVIER: It was perfect because I think it was Richard who suggested that we should talk to you, because we were coming to Bradford for the first time to do ‘New Queers on the Block’, which was kind of artist development project. But we knew nothing about Bradford. And in the first couple of days, we knew the best restaurant straight away because Sonia was the first person that we met here.

She just gave us a really good in to the whole thing. And then you did events for ‘New Queers on the Block’.

SONIA: That’s right.

XAVIER: And it was a really great way to bring, I guess, queer people from the town
that we didn’t know, they didn’t always feel represented in the town at the time.

SONIA: There wasn’t a lot of queer events in town. I feel like you really opened that up, opened that space to them.

XAVIER: Well, exactly. I feel like if you’re having free food…

SONIA: Yeah, exactly.

XAVIER: So, what are you doing now that, like, is part of that suggestion of creativity and food sharing?

SONIA: Yeah. Well, there’s a couple of things I’m working on with food. So, I do run a weekly bread making class at the Millside Centre. We do it, like, every other week. So, one week it’s in the Millside Centre. The following Monday is in a local hotel which is within walking distance from my house. Which supports sanctuary seekers, people who are claiming asylum, refugees…. It’s a bread-making class called ‘Together We Rise’, and the pun is intended. It’s kind of a group where we all get together on a Monday morning. The great thing about bread is, like, most cultures have got some kind of bread.

So, me as the lead chef on it, I endeavour to have a variety of European breads, African-style breads… We sort of do a guided meditation at the beginning, and it’s encouraging people to try and be grounded, focus on their senses, the smell, the taste, the touch of, like, the flour that we’re making. I don’t think that’s necessarily like a final outcome where we’re making an artwork, but people are super happy learning how to make all these different breads. And some of them are artworks, like… when it’s Christmas, we make this twisted style bread, which is just beautiful, and then people can, like, take it back to their rooms or back home and share it with their family.

So, I love that and I guess a lot of people sometimes have like Monday morning dread, but I never really do because, yeah, there’s no emails to check. It’s just going into the community centre and baking with some awesome women across Bradford.

XAVIER: Great way to start the week.

SONIA: Yeah, I love it, I love it! Then the other project that I’m working on is called ‘Edible Archives’ with Harry, who’s sat over there. (talking to Harry) I am blinded by lights, but I clocked your green jumper.

So, Harry and I work together on a project called ‘Edible Archives’ which it’s all about creating multi sensorial, visual art installations in response to heritage buildings. So, we’re all about trying to flip etiquette in environments that might seem fusty. Like, the first installation, for example, was in the in C Hall in Bradford. It’s meant to be like a place that’s open to the public, but like, no one gets to go in
there. It’s never open. You need to be working for the council or be invited in. They’ve got all of this silverware and glassware that ‘belongs to the people’, but you never get to see it. It’s behind these glass cabinets. So, we really wanted to sort of, like, flip the etiquette of the space and invite people in to come and share this communal feast where they’ve got to take the silverware home, which was engraved
with Harry’s beautiful poetry.

XAVIER: Really?

SONIA: Yeah. Which is great, actually, because sometimes we get messages when we have events saying that, ‘Oh, I’ve still got that cutlery in my drawer.’ It’s like a nice little sort of legacy of the project. But yeah, the food is at the centre of that. So we might have like, an edible element or like, a drink that we make which is inspired by the architecture, or the artwork of the building that it’s in response to.

We tend to have, like, an audio piece that goes with it. I think I’m definitely an undiagnosed neurodivergent person. So, as an artist, I feel I’m coming from a space of it being like ‘how can it activate all these different senses?’ In my sort of human experience, this audio element multifunctions like an edible element to it, as well as the sort of set that we bring into the space. We also try and invite people in to come and experience it at their own, their own sort of pace, or how they want to experience it. So, it’s not like they need to come in and sit and be quiet or anything like that.

Like, you can play the audio piece how you want. You might want to go and sit outside and listen to it.

XAVIER: That’s really lovely because I think also like there’s something about this multi sensorial approach to it that allows you to eat the history. You know what I mean? Like, you literally putting it inside your body in many ways. Is that important for you, when you guys are conceptualising these spaces in these projects to think about?

SONIA: Yeah, I think definitely in terms of the flavour development because, I guess, the clear example might be the ice lollies that we made which were in response to these murals that exist in this 70s concrete shopping centre in town. So, we 3D scanned them, made the motifs on the actual ice lollies themselves.

But then thinking from a flavour perspective, it was like, ‘oh, well to me they look
like ripples of vanilla ice cream’. So, we made vanilla ice cream ad the outside of the building is like very concrete, like black and white specks. So, trying to create a sorbet that maybe had that sort of texture.
So yeah, trying to get people to think more about What might this building taste like?

XAVIER: Okay. What would Theatre at The Mill taste like?

SONIA: What would Theatre at The Mill taste like? I throw that out to you.

XAVIER: Damn. Like, a Victorian sponge cake. No. What would you call it?! Victoria cake. Is that what you would call it?….

SONIA: Victoria sponge cake, yeah. I feel like… Because I’ve actually cooked so much Indian food here, it might look like a dessert on the outside, but actually, it’s savoury.

XAVIER: Oh!

SONIA: When you cut through it.

XAVIER: I like that. I like that a lot. And so… what’s next? What’s happening with ‘Edible Archives’? Where is it going?

SONIA: We’re working on a project, in a couple of weeks that’s happening in Saint George’s Hall,
which is a music venue. So, we’ve got a drinking Saint George’s Hall event that’s happening there. And there are a few stories that I really want to spotlight, like, the Bhangra gigs that happened there. Sister Rosetta Tharpe played there, and she’s the inventor of rock ‘n’ roll as we know it and was a black lesbian woman.

XAVIER: Yeah, iconic.

SONIA: Yeah, just living her best life… So, we’ve got that project on the go as well. I feel like with ‘Edible Archives’ in future… Harry, I’m not sure if you agree, but, like…

XAVIER: Sorry, Harry.

SONIA: I’m not sure where it’s going to go. Like, we’ve been running these projects for the past couple of years, but I would say that… like, breaking down elite sort of restaurants, like Michelin-starred restaurants and trying to bring high-quality food, beautiful gourmet food to the masses, is my aim with ‘Edible Archives’.

XAVIER: Okay. I agree. Why is that important? To bring down such a thing, like…

SONIA: Because it’s just for the top, however, whatever percentage it is, like, we don’t have, like, Michelin-starred restaurants in Bradford.

XAVIER: Do you need it?

SONIA: Well, no.

XAVIER: Bradford already has the best food in the country.

SONIA: But, like, what I am trying to say is, you shouldn’t be paying like a hefty price tag for beautiful food, which looks like artwork or whatever, you know? It’s, like, that gourmet food… food that might be like a mini sculpture or based on a theme… You shouldn’t have to pay a hefty price tag for it. Like, yeah, just want to dismantle that.

XAVIER: Nice.

SONIA: Yeah. Especially with the cost of everything going up. I’m glad that this event is free, with free food as well. I only ever want to work on free or Pay As You Feel events. I think that’s what I’d like to pursue with ‘Edible Archives’ is to make it bigger and more accessible.

But yeah, always free.

—-

BIOGRAPHIES

Sonia Sandhu is a Bradford born & based chef, artist and producer. Her plant forward menus are global-inspired, thoughtfully prepared, seasonal, and vibrant.  She has catered for retreats, gatherings, gigs, weddings, theatre and installation art shows, and teaches regular mindfulness through bread-making classes with sanctuary seekers. She co-runs Edible Archives, an emerging arts company, creating multi-sensorial art installations which incorporate telling heritage stories through playful menus, sound and set.

Xavier de Sousa (he/they) is an multidisciplinary performance maker and culture worker based between Portugal and the UK. 


They co-curate the digital research and live art commissioning platform performingborders, and Citemor Festival (Portugal). Previously developed and co-curated performance events Queer Migrant Takeover and CUT Festival, as well as New Queers on the Block, Marlborough Productions’ Artist and Community Development programme. Their creative practice also encompasses writing, having published various creative, reflective and research-based texts for publications such as METAL, Penguin, Les Cahiers Luxembourgeois and Centre national de littérature – Lëtzebuerger Literaturarchiv. As a producer, they launched the free-resource space Producer Gathering together with Sally Rose, and worked on the development of the Producer Agreement, the first agreement of its kind in the sector for unions BECTU and ITC. Previously, they produced for independent artists such as Louise Orwin, jamie lewis hadley and Evangelia Kolyra, amongst many others.

Xavier’s performance works include Almost Xav (Southbank Centre), and the trilogy of collaborative shows about belonging and power structures, POST (Ovalhouse, international tour), Pós- (Teatro do Bairro Alto & CITEMOR) and REGNANT (HOME, LiveCollission). They have recently launched a performance-exhibition What Becomes… (METAL, East Street Arts) and a series of multi-media podcasts Slow Cooking. Previously, they collaborated with Tim Etchels, Rosana Cade, The Famous Lauren Barri-Holstein, Needless Alley Collective and presented work with Ovalhouse Theatre, HOME, East Street Arts, Latitude Festival, Tate Modern, METAL Culture, Southbank Centre, The Yard Theatre (UK), Untethered Magic (Kenya), Warehouse9 (DK), CITEMOR Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto (Portugal), Operastate Festival (Italy), Onassis Culture Centre (Athens), IIT Gujarat (India), Kalamata Dance Festival (Greece), Más Allá Del Muro Festival (Mexico), amongst others.

Xavier is a founder of Migrants in Culture and is a member of BECTU and ITC – Independent Theatre Council. Website: www.xavierdesousa.co.uk | Twitter: @Xavinisms | Instagram: @Xavinisms