event planning and production;
concept and real estate design and development, writing and speaking about
food culture, farming and
the small business economy—
In all of my work—
e squared
I am inspired
by the relationship between the big (large social forces such as capitalism and democracy, abstract ideas and concepts,)
and the small (how we eat, the napkin on the table, our daily habits).
Material culture is a metonym for Culture Culture.
A lot of my writing and work looks at how the often ignored details of how a culture eats, dresses, and socializes reveal hidden truths about what it believes and where it is heading.
In my business, I use this
connectivity between the concrete and the abstract
to create experiences, and places, that have depth and soul.
The restaurants and businesses I imagine and try to bring to life are best experienced IRL, by all the senses and the body.
They are integrated from concept to execution by a singular vision. The details (napkins, light fixtures, check presenters) flow from ideas and intentions, creating a conceptual and visual harmony and integration that is more than merely aesthetic, but grounded in belief.
And they are undergirded by a desire to help people, and improve everyday life and quotidian struggles, using joy and a sense of play rather than guilt, rules, or shaming.
My concepts come from love, or what my hero Wendell Berry calls “affection.”
I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members,the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.
—Wendell Berry, It All Rests on Affection, Jefferson Lecture 2012
the roots
Sustainability, and looking to nature as a model for commerce, is part of our company's DNA. The original Nambe farm still supplies seasonal products (mixed greens, arugula, kale, peppers, peaches, apricots, cherries, apples, tomatoes, scallions, basil, heirloom potatoes, beans, mint, and eggs) for the New Mexico restaurants and composts restaurant waste into nutrient-rich soil amendments for the garden beds.
