BELOVED: The Body Holds, Community Heals.

This dining experience grows out of something deeply personal, a conversation I'm sure we are all having about what we’re holding in this moment.

At this dinner I invite us to remember the healing power of a collective. For me it is shaped by a book that has lived with me for years, by one of my favorite authors, Toni Morrison. A writer, who in many ways became a quiet alchemist of my own liberation and truth telling.

Here, beloved is not a person.
It is a way of understanding how care becomes a form of resistance.

This table honors the lineage of those who used food and gathering as tools for freedom. Kitchens as meeting places. Meals as strategy passed hand to hand when nothing else could be trusted.

Pull up a chair.

About Chef Adé: Adé Carrena is an award-winning intuitive chef, filmmaker, and storyteller redefining the future of food through the lens of West African traditions and Southern roots. She is the founder of iLéWA Foods, a spice company creating economic opportunities for women farmers in Bénin and Ghana.

Named 2023 North Carolina Chef of the Year and recently crowned a Food Network Chopped Champion, Adé is known for her immersive dining experiences that nourish, reclaim, and celebrate diasporic identity. Her acclaimed documentary Bite of Bénin has earned multiple awards for its bold exploration of food, memory, and belonging. Whether in the kitchen or behind the camera, Adé’s work honors ancestry, uplifts community, and feeds liberation.