CHEF · AGRI-CULINARY EDUCATOR · RESEARCHER — TORONTO
I explore the knowledge carried through food - and ask what is worth carrying into the future.
Through dinners, research, education and food-system strategy, I turn questions about culture, ecology and the future into experiences people can taste, discuss and build from.
SELECTED WORK
A record of questions I've cooked, researched and gathered around. Each one travels until it becomes something people can taste, use, discuss or build on.
I am researching how farmers and communities experience physical, economic, ecological, social and cultural loss across cassava systems - while centring community knowledge, food sovereignty and farmer agency.
Next question: When a crop disappears, what leaves with it?
I use food and gathering to explore migration, memory, identity and belonging - designing meals so the story becomes something people taste and sit inside, not only something they are told.
Next question: What does a table remember?
I am following an ongoing inquiry into movement, food, memory and ecological knowledge - and what pastoral ways of knowing might offer future generations facing change and displacement.
Next question: What did mobility teach us about abundance?In each full case study, I want to show the context, my role, who was at the table, what we made, what changed, and the next question. I only add outcomes and collaborator details once they are confirmed.
WHERE THE QUESTION BEGINS
I come from a Somali pastoral nomadic heritage. What travels has to matter.
Food knowledge travels. Stories travel. Techniques travel. Memory travels. Ways of reading land, animals, seasons and one another travel.
I was born in Somalia, raised in Italy and have called Toronto home for more than two decades. Growing up around the Mediterranean, fresh seasonal food was normal; at the same time, I often felt the distance from African foods and crops that carried another part of my story.
I'm not interested in romanticizing the past. Old does not automatically mean better. Modern does not automatically mean progress. I'm interested in the harder work of discernment.
What is worth carrying forward?THE PRACTICE
Food is one of humanity's oldest ways of carrying knowledge. A recipe can carry migration. A spice can carry trade. A seed can carry generations of agricultural knowledge.
So I cook.I make ideas edible.
Can a meal reveal what moves with people - ingredients, memory, technique, identity and belonging?
Explore → 02 / BIODIVERSITYWhat changes when ecological complexity moves from a report into an ingredient, a plate and a conversation?
Explore → 03 / LOSSWhat if loss includes soil, knowledge, culture, time and agency - not only money or spoiled food?
Explore → 04 / FUTUREHow might ancestral knowledge, climate, technology and culinary imagination meet at the table?
Explore →01 / MIGRATIONWhat does migration taste like?HOW THE WORK MOVES
I begin with a question worth the journey.
I listen to people, practice, place and the land.
I bring lived knowledge into conversation with history and evidence.
I let what I learn change the original question.
I cook, design, prototype and test.
I bring different forms of expertise together.
I ask what the learning might become next.
When I take knowledge seriously, research it with care and translate it into experiences people can use, I want the work to change what communities and institutions are able to see, decide and imagine.
THE FRAMEWORK
African food is often discussed through heritage - what ancestors ate, what should be preserved, what may be lost. Those questions matter. I am interested in another one too: what could African food knowledge become?
TASTE THE FUTURE
Pick a starting point. Each is a question I'd cook - a dish as a way of thinking, not a recipe.
Okra - bamye - can be approached as food, migration story, ecological material and a starting point for imagining a hotter, drier future.
What changes when an ingredient is treated as knowledge, not only commodity?THE TABLE
My role is often to set the table - to convene, translate and make space for different kinds of expertise to shape the work.
FOR INSTITUTIONS & FUNDERS
Some questions require more than a dinner or a report. When I take on deeper inquiry, I need time in the field, relationships built slowly, different forms of expertise at one table, room to experiment, and ways of returning what I learn to the people who made the learning possible.
I research with communities, food systems and landscapes.
I use ingredients and techniques to ask future-facing questions through practice.
I translate learning into curriculum, exhibitions, dinners, publications and public experiences.
I am building longer-term ways to document, teach and activate African food knowledge.
I can shape research, a dinner, a public program, curriculum, facilitation or strategy around a defined institutional need.
Bring the question →Support can create room for fieldwork, public scholarship, culinary R&D and the development of long-term knowledge infrastructure.
Support an inquiry →HOW I WORK WITH KNOWLEDGE
I do not preselect the answer simply because an institution already has resources, language or a preferred solution.
I ask who defines expertise, who gets heard, who benefits, and what should remain under community control.
I do not want knowledge to disappear into a report. I want findings to travel back in forms people can access, question and use.
Consent, attribution and stewardship matter to me when lived knowledge becomes research, curriculum, story or public program.
ABOUT
I'm a chef by practice, an agri-culinary educator by vocation and a researcher by curiosity. My work moves between the kitchen, the farm, the classroom, policy spaces and the table.
I was born in Somalia, raised in Italy and have made Toronto home for more than two decades. Growing up around the Mediterranean taught me to value freshness and seasonality, while my later reconnection with African foodways changed how I understood culture, belonging and what culturally appropriate food access can mean.
I bring an Afrocentric lens to culinary education and food-system work. I believe food is a fundamental human right, and I use cooking, research and public conversation to connect culture, ecology, justice and possibility.
I don't believe everything old should be preserved. I don't believe everything new represents progress. I'm interested in the space between them.
WHERE THE PRACTICE HAS TRAVELLED
I have spent years moving between production, education, research and public culture. These are a few places where that practice has taken form.
As Value-Added Coordinator, I used farm-grown produce to develop preserves, pickles, sauces and other products while working toward a financially sustainable value-added model.
As an Associate Fellow, I bring food, culture, diaspora and research into the same conversation.
I have spoken about food sovereignty, Pan-African cuisine and anti-colonial food systems in an international sustainability context.
I spent a month working with Bachelor of Culinary Management students through an extended culinary learning intervention.
WHERE INSTITUTIONS ENTER
I work differently depending on the question, but I bring the same practice of listening, research, culinary imagination and community accountability into each room.
Research · curriculum · lectures · participatory inquiry
Exhibitions · public programs · food-led interpretation
Field research · pilot programs · public knowledge · knowledge infrastructure
Strategy · research · community engagement · program design
COLLABORATE
If you're not sure where your idea belongs, start by telling me what you are trying to understand.