Crossing Tables
#9 Narrative Native Dining: Imagining How Immigrant Histories Shape the Table
An artist, chef, or collective brings together flavours and migration stories in a sensory experience. Every third Thursday of the month at 6 PM at Plein.
This dinner invites you to explore overlooked migration histories and how they have shaped Dutch food culture and everyday life. Through food, objects, and shared rituals, the evening reflects on how the past continues to echo in how we eat today.
About the diner
You share a four-course dinner inspired by Taiwan, China, Korea, and Italy. Each course is made by a different designer. They research the history of migration from these countries to the Netherlands, and imagine how these stories might appear on your plate today. This way, they connect past and present.
Sharing stories and history
One of the courses relates to a historical object from the Fenix collection: the sheet music of Pinda Pinda (1933). During the 1930s economic crisis, many Chinese migrants working in Rotterdam’s harbour lost their jobs. To make ends meet, some turn to selling teng teng, a sweet peanut brittle. The ‘peanut man’ with his tin of treats becomes a familiar, though not always welcome, sight.
The song serves in the diner as a starting point to reflect on how Chinese dock workers and street vendors were perceived in Dutch society, and how those images continue to shape cultural memory.
Throughout the evening, food becomes a way of sharing stories. Historical documents, design, and imagination meet at the table. The dinner offers a sensory experience that opens space to reflect on migration, history, and their lasting presence in the Netherlands.
photo: leroy verbeet
About Narrative Native Dining
Founded in 2024, Narrative Native Dining explores the moments when cultures met, overlapped, and quietly shaped each other. They look at how these overlooked encounters influenced Dutch food culture, treating food not just as nourishment but as a living archive.
For this event, designers, artists, and chefs from China, Italy, Korea, and Taiwan explore Dutch cuisine through historical connections with their home countries. Each dish and installation tells a story, mixing memory, experience, and archival fragments. They invite you to a shared table where multiple histories meet.
Narrative Native Dining is formed by: Collective To Be Cooked, Hsin Min Chan, Jian Da Huang, Matilde Stolfa and ShiSoH.
