Why do all gatherings end up in the kitchen? Because that’s where flavors, stories, and memories converge. Culture Kitchen is Tucson Meet Yourself’s live demonstration stage, where local cooks, chefs, mixologists, and culture bearers prepare beloved dishes and share the traditions, migrations, and family histories behind them. Past Culture Kitchen events have invited audiences to watch tamales take shape in two traditions at once, learn what goes into a hand-rolled grape leaf, and hear how a recipe traveled continents to reach a Tucson table. Presentations are free, informal, and designed for interaction.
Feng-Feng Yeh
Culture Kitchen Curator
Feng-Feng Yeh is a chef and multi-disciplinary artist. Yeh’s practice transforms diasporic historical narratives into impactful sensorial community activations. Utilizing food to create dynamic homes for intersectional stories, Yeh offers collective creative acts in the form of culinary experiences, installations, and large-scale public art as a means of cultural reclamation and empowerment against erasure. Yeh’s multimodal award-winning Chinese Chorizo Project (CCP) explores the revival of a once forgotten delicacy from her hometown of Tucson, Arizona called Chinese chorizo. Launched with the annual Chinese Chorizo Festival, the exploration of this symbolic food memorializes the history of solidarity built between Mexican and Chinese immigrants at some 582 Chinese grocery stores that existed in Tucson from 1881-1991. Since 2022, Yeh has produced and donated 2500 pounds of Chinese chorizo to over 90 restaurants across Arizona and NYC. Dishes featuring this culinary relic bring new dialogs into the present, challenging traditional borderland narratives covering immigration, intergenerational identity, community stewardship, and ancestral learnings.