Sensory Food Experience: The Four Seasons
Ethereal lit jars filled with Fynbos found in and around Cape Town, line the table.
Weather, colourful light, nature sounds, fynbos herbs and fragrance were used to trigger the senses and experience the seasons in an experiential dining experience.
Exploring Mother Nature’s moods in the seasons and intertwining them into a sensory dinner experience.
Held in a gallery space – The Spier Secret Courtyard pop-up in 2014, Cape Town.
Sensory
Hear – I mixed a soundtrack that flowed with each course. I used sounds found in nature, weather sounds (thunder, rain and wind in winter) and softly introduced Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at certain times during each course.
See – I coloured the room with 7 specialty lights and controlled it from a DMX board – 1000’s of hues of light. I could control the brightness and intensity of the hues. Lightning as a bright white flash.
Smell – I used fragrance and flavoured smoke to invigorate the smell sense in Autumn (burning wood) and the last Spring course (jasmine fragrance).
Taste – I worked with the notion of nostaligia ie: What is the taste of summer, to me?
Spring – hues of pinks and purples, light greens.
Winter wind and rain (the ‘cloud’ above the table is moving in the wind).
Warming up inside next to a crackling fire after the thunder storm (Winter).
Palate cleanser – flower gate tea pours over an apple ginger sorbet.
Spring plate of edible flowers and vegetables with nutty ‘soil’.
Bird paper cuts to play with
Origami boxes and flower gate tea for a gift
Foraged herbs and flowers in a hand-sewn menu bag to take home
Origami boxes of a flower gate tea as a gift for each guest
Chatting to Annabel