Together with Vina, co-parent of an expanding baby (collective) we inaugurated Roffa Rice Club properly by hosting our first Liwetan dinner. It was the event we'd been building toward: a communal feast rooted in an Indonesian eating tradition that is often misunderstood.
More than forty people filled the space. What we had imagined as something intimate grew into something much larger and much more alive than either of us had planned for.
Liwetan is not a restaurant experience. It is not plated. It is rice laid out on banana leaves, shared and eaten together on the floor.
In Indonesia, Liwetan is the kind of thing that happens at family gatherings, at friendly neighbourhood celebrations. Here in Rotterdam, making it happen required weeks of planning, coordination with partners, logistics, production, and a lot of rice.
I thank everyone who came, who brought their curiosity and their appetite together. And to WORM, for being the kind of space where something like this can take place at all.
This is just the beginning. The collective is growing. The rice will keep coming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Photo by Noé Vince-Soós