Caroline Hopkinson is a food artist and food anthropologist whose work sits at the collision of neuroscience, performance, ritual and sensory design. In this conversation she reframes everything we think we know about eating — not as sustenance or even pleasure, but as our most intimate, politically charged and deeply human act. 

From the communion of a morning coffee order to immersive dining experiences in Berlin and Paris, Caroline reveals why food is the one domain where algorithms have no jurisdiction.

• Food is our most intimate ritual — more so than sex, because what we eat literally becomes us and can be read in our bodies months later
• In a world of algorithmic content, food remains the last bastion of radical agency — the one thing we can fully control and consciously choose
• Children have more taste buds than adults, which is why they reject certain flavours — it's sensitivity, not fussiness, and it diminishes as we age
• Bitterness in flavour signals evolutionary danger, but those who override it tend to be risk takers and thrill seekers — your taste palette reveals your personality archetype
• Sound is the fastest sense — high frequencies amplify sweetness, low frequencies bring out bitterness, and a designed soundscape can transform the experience of a meal entirely
• The meals we prepare are the punctuation of our lives; every celebration, transition and gathering is anchored by food, making it the definitive marker of intentionality
• Surrender is not giving up control — it requires trust, and when onboarded properly, it allows people to move beyond hyperactive choice into genuinely transformative experience
• Capturing a memory and creating one are fundamentally different acts — the most powerful dining moments resist documentation and live only in the body
• Intermittent fasting and mindful eating aren't new trends — they mirror ancient religious cycles of feast and fast that humanity followed for millennia
• Food is the last domain untouched by VR, AI or the metaverse — its irreducible physical reality makes communal dining more valuable and culturally significant than ever

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

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Caroline Hobkinson: The idea of actually sharing bread and getting together into the real room. It's such a kind of hyper real moment of our existence as well, where we perceive certain flavors, we can't escape from it because obviously screen-based interactions are very clinical. I have a lot of agency about how I'm perceived.

I can put the light on, I can modulate the sound, the microphone. But food is really real and you can't escape that sense of reality. And I think that of experienced lift reality, there's no VR for food. It's food doesn't exist in the metaverse and AI can't actually explain taste and flavor to us.

And I think that's gonna be more and more the intimate of having meals together and I think. Even how brands are now interacting with a consumer is through those bespoke dining experiences or dinners where they put them together. 

Radim Malinic: Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinic I'm a designer, author, and eternally curious human being.

 I am talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. 

 Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create? 

Radim Malinic: Today I'm speaking with Caroline Hobkinson, food artist, food anthropologist, and a person who will permanently change how you think about every meal you've ever eaten. Caroline's journey took her from studying multidisciplinary arts to building a practice that sits at the intersection of neuroscience, performance and sensory design.

Over 20 years, she has moved between advertising immersive dining and radical wellness, always using food as the entry point to shift how people perceive themselves and the world around them. In this conversation, Caroline explores why food is our last act of radical agency in an algorithm controlled world, how sound physically changes the taste of what we eat and why we surrender not control is the gateway to the most extraordinary experiences.

It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Caroline Hobkinson.

 Hey, Caroline, welcome to Daring Creativity. How are you doing today?

Caroline Hobkinson: I am very well. Thank you so much for having me.

Radim Malinic: you're most welcome. the record, you and I have met very briefly at one of my supper clubs with lots of amazing creative leaders, and This is for the record. I don't know too much about you. I've got no questions prepared, but I'm curious.

And the reason why you're here is because you do food, art, and anthropology. You do work with sensory objects, so close to our hearts and minds and not taste buds. So I'm hoping that we can join dots and find out who's Caroline Hobkinson? What do you do?

How would you do it? So please introduce yourself.

Caroline Hobkinson: it's beautiful. To start off with a blank slate I am a food artist and food anthropologist. I love the way that food, obviously, as you mentioned, we met during one of your suppa clubs where you believe breaking bread is a really great way to. Bond with people to get right through there.

But obviously eating is our most intimate ritual. It's the most intimate way we interact for with our environment, with other people. And for millennia, we shared meals and we have anchored memory, community and meaning with it. especially now that it's a world shaped by algos algorithms, we still choose what passes our lips.

So I would say it's our last bus of radical agency because if you give me content, visual content, there's such an onslaught of visual content. But I can close my eyes, I can avert, I can click and block other things. But food is one thing that I have absolute agency. About the idea of we get really frustrated and angered when you say this is how you prepare the food from your hometown.

And people get really revved up. It's no, this is not the right way. And I quite like that. I like the passion there is but actually what passes our lips is incredibly intimate. It's more intimate than sex because unless we become pregnant, food stays with us on a metaphysical level. You can see that I had a coffee eight months ago on the strand of my hair.

And I think it's interesting that when it comes to time and intentionality in our world now, it's full of intention when it comes to spirituality, retreats, the way that we put food into our body. it's the ultimate marker of intentionality. So I think that's really powerful in that way. Yeah, I think for me, food is, there's a tangible reality around us, and we are living this double life of.

Everything that's on our Instore feed and our news feed online. But actually food really anchors us in the present. It's very much like the stuff that's around us. It forces us to be present in there. And the idea of shaping us and sharing bread with other people, sharing a meal is the ultimate bonding thing of being present together in the room where we traditionally put our knives down, we put our weapons to the side.

And that's why when you go to restaurant, you have this really annoyingly blunt knives. And even if you order steak, they have to make a big like song and dance and bring you a sharp knife because that's a one time where we are together and we come together in peace or intentionality of peace.

Yes.

Radim Malinic: Caroline I can literally, for my lack of questions, I can literally just take everything you've said and make a whole hour of our conversation about this because the way you bring together food as a ritual, as, and a performance and social commentary, I think you find yourself in this unique spot where you see it from such a different perspective.

Because what I love what you said, you said there's intentionality of what we put into our bodies.

My first intrigue was like do we really intentionally put things into our bodies? Or is it just convenience? Is it just a pattern? Because you talk about the food being cooked by people from your, let's say from the hometown, and they are very proud about how they make it. And any other version of, it's not quite right.

So how did you, how did we trace it back to you being born in Cologne and now finding yourself in England working across all of this.

Caroline Hobkinson: I was drawn to London to study at Central Saint Martins because I really liked the idea of. Multidisciplinary art. So I went to St. Martin's, really loved everything to do with choreography and spectacle and creating performance based art. I like the ephemeral of food that you create this meal and then it's just gone.

And the idea that it doesn't stay. And then working a lot with rituals. I, use the word rituals overused. What are habits, what are rituals, and what I'm really into with working as well with neuroscience, but the idea where does anthropology come in? And food anthropology, because it shapes who we are and the habits, how we eat, because the meals we prepare are the punctuation of our lives.

They're the question marks. They're the commas, they're the exclamation marks. The idea that every time we celebrate a moment, food is the anchoring point. And that's something that I find really beautiful. Obviously, if you have the intentionality of a dinner of coming together during a dining experience of how.

Launch themself is through a dinner. It's an influencer dinner. It's even officially like food is the ultimate luxuries. It's like the idea of we are gone away from material goods and tangible goods into experiences, but these experiences are obviously very random and very, easily ret traceable.

But the food in the dinner is very much that's us here in the here and now. And it can't be repeated. We've all had this, you have the same food, the same dinner, but different people and it's a completely different vibe. And I think that's a really powerful thing, the idea of what just happened on the different night.

And sometimes it's just magic. But there are all these components which I really like, and I think we are, that's what ultimately makes us human. And it's away from algorithms and ai because it's the idea of, it's our perception that changes us. Like the only reason I know that I'm there is. the way I perceive my surroundings in there.

we take the worldl from our surroundings and our brains are categorizing and building a picture, but the inner picture highly, super valuable. That's a variable. It's like your reality is different to mine, but when we have food, it brings us on the same level and it's really democratic because we both eat the same thing.

So we can almost relate towards different things. So like the idea of our culture and perception is, is the only way we can drive the story. It's almost like I experienced, therefore I arm. And I think that's a really important part of experiences because that's ultimately where the world is going.

And it's like we curate and we need experiences in order to justify our whole experience and to get away from this onslaught of, yeah, different algorithm pushed content, which is mostly visual, 

Radim Malinic: I am really curious 'cause I was gonna keep us on a straight, with me trying to ask more about food anthropology because I'm sure there's lots of people look looking around the room like, what do you mean with food anthropology? But I'm gonna take a hard left and ask you actually more about the perception because you said that at some point when we eat food, it's the leveler. We got a similar perception of what we're eating. But how do I taste buds differ because even for example, with color, like visual perception, we see color differently.

There is a preset sort of average of what you, might see. For example, I've realized my left eye is more saturated in my right eye so I don't even see color through both eyes in the same way. So when it comes to eating food, from the point of neuroscience and from the p for biological truths, how do we perceive taste?

And does it differ from one another? Because not everyone is the same. We have got a similar vehicle, our vessels, our bodies, but with the perception, when we talk about a fact, when you mention the food is ultimate luxury, it's even the, the term of actual ultimate. Not that food is ultimate luxury.

Not many people would perceive it that way because they wouldn't think it that way. So can you talk about perception a

little bit? 

Caroline Hobkinson: I think it's, yeah, it's beautiful because obviously our site is very arbitrary and obviously it's like our site vision, changes and food as well is based our own biography, but he can almost time travel through. Every bite we take, because obviously it transports us to all the other moments we had experienced the same taste, the morsels, like the proust's idea of dunking a madelin into hot tea, and suddenly it transports him into a different time when he was young.

It's really beautiful, but there is a lot of unilateral truth to it. It depends of because obviously our mouth has a similar size, so I can almost working with unusual ingredients, which it's a really beautiful project. I started with two amazing sounds artists where we had an estimated consumption time because obviously the mouth is shaped very similar to everyone and the amount it takes to actually eat something.

So if I create a soundtrack that is, the estimated consumption time of a bite. for instance, if it's three minutes, I can create a beautiful soundtrack to make it last that long. And the responses of those are very unilateral. Like the idea of having a high frequency brings out sweetness.

Having a low frequency brings out bitterness in food, and there's a certain universal truth to it because evolutionary how we respond to food or bitterness, most people. Relate to bitterness, to danger because bitter in nature, is obviously a signifier for something that's bad for you.

 But when we have kids, obviously we always think oh, they have to learn to have a really beautiful palette, but actually kids have more taste buds than adults and that's why they wouldn't like certain things. So it's not so much of a child being a fussy eater, they just have more taste bud to detect it.

So obviously it's a bit uneasy, but if you want the best whiskey taste, that would probably be a 10-year-old child because they can actually detect all the nuances and it, rather than the average. The typical person where whiskey is marketed, it is, would be like that 60-year-old guy, but actually by then your taste buds are quite diminished.

 So it's really interesting how that changes. But obviously that's. having all of that knowledge is almost like I use that as a palette, like an artist with a palette and using that and modulating and actually choreographing those moments. Obviously I'm not saying that we should eat like this all the time, but they create beautiful moments where we have and share moments where we heighten our sense of perception on awareness of how we perceive it.

And it's beautiful, but obviously it's not newfangled science. Obviously the big world religions have used that for long time. So when I say I create radical immersive dining experiences, obviously the Catholic church recreates that every Sunday when. Physically, you eat the body of Christ.

And it's like you, it's like we are queuing up towards having this communion thing, but every time you go and have a coffee from a barista, this is such an important touch point where people are waiting in line to have their coffee. And the ultimate flex in every urban environment is that people know my coffee order and they call my name and it's Caroline, and that's for me.

And then I'm waiting in line to almost receive the communion of my coffee in that way. So it's, very much about like how we interact within ourselves and that human connection. And most people say that actually the moment they have that coffee is the only human interaction for the entire day because a lot of our meetings happen online.

so I think that's a really important thing because you think how in a world where we could all have our coffee at home, people still venture out to that one specific coffee place and it's very hyped and they make coffee just so, this becomes like a modern communion in that way. So that's where the anthropology comes in because it's the habits and the ritual of standing in line and the anticipation, it's like the most beautiful part is it's unnerving as well when you're really hungry and food is just about served and you're trying to hold yourself back because the host hasn't opened the dinner yet.

But we are hungry, we're salivating. We just wanna tuck in and it's, it's a really beautiful, the anticipation moment just before dinner is just gorgeous. 

Radim Malinic: When you say it's really beautiful, I think there's lots of hang people going no, It's a sugar drop. I need my food. I need my food. But what's really interesting, what you said about bitterness, because from what I know, that the bitterness is also like the sign of making something feel so odd and so different that we believe it's actually let's say it's a medicine.

The reason why medicine is bitter is because we need to believe that it's doing something that's potentially also why a Red Bull is so, popular or so effective because it doesn't taste like a natural drink, so I think that acquired taste is something that it signals I'm guessing here, but I believe it's, signals to the body.

This is different than the ordinary.

Caroline Hobkinson: But I think that's a really exciting thing. the idea of bitterness when it comes to our taste perception and realizing how you mentioned acquired taste, but it's actually, it's a lift memory where we, we learned how to overwrite the idea that bitter equals danger and that becomes a different archetype.

So it's almost, you can tell that someone who likes bitter flavors is more of a thrill seeker, someone who's more of a risk taker. So you can almost profile someone who likes bitterness. It's the person who's more of a rollercoaster person, someone who likes fast car, someone who learns that, that at that moment of risk taking.

There more to learn, like having black coffee and something rather than the Netflix and chill person who likes soft flavors, vanilla roses, and, and pink. So there's the idea of the people pleaser. So actually our taste palettes is a very interesting insight into certain archetypes or union archetypes that exist.

But you can almost get straight to it. So I can tell you about the personality of someone who actually prefers bitter flavors or has learned to override this initial very natural evolutionary stopping point.

Radim Malinic: I'm loving this. Before we get to talk more about all the senses of food and experiences, I wanna know a little bit more about you because you're clearly into people. You are clearly into performance and food and all, everything around it, and. no one so eloquently ever described that impatient care at Starbucks or any other coffee chain to us it resembles a holy communion because I don't know who was the marketing genius who decided with Starbucks are we gonna put names on our coffees?

 And apparently that's have earned a lot of trust. And the upon that's elevated the experience, I personally dislike it. I always use a fake name as a joke because who are you? what do you want from me? I just want a coffee in peace. And so it, it's interesting how it all works for different people, but how did you get interesting and curious about food and curious about humans ancestry of, food and all of that journey because we pulling together, in my opinion, sort of inspirations and influences from different places.

So how did you become you and where did they come from?

Caroline Hobkinson: I think I'm fascinated by people and different patterns, and the idea that food show me what you eat and your likes and your taste and. You tell me who you are. And I think that's a really beautiful portal into the insight into that. Having worked in advertising as a creative director, I always thought it's really interesting how marketing towards people, and it's such a guessing game, but actually deep diving into psychology and archetypes, there's such a, there's so many fabulous patterns where you can actually have such a beautiful insight.

And I think insights and semiotics are really fascinating and food is a really great thing because it's something we do every day. It's very personal. Very intimate, but it shows so much about our personality and it's our lift experience, our biography in that. And I think maybe I just like deep diving into it.

And then using neuroscience is obviously as an information tool for that. And as well decoding certain ways and patterns and behavior patterns. I find human behavior endlessly fascinating. And how, obviously that is used by big brands. When you mention coffee chains as well, it's whether we like it or not, it makes a lot of people a lot of money.

And I think the idea of how we change in a different environment, because obviously depending how old you are as well, it's like we know that life before social media or before screen-based things. The idea of anchoring ourselves in the here and now, perception is more than ever really important.

The idea of what is our experience and experiencing. And how do we coincide? There are different realms. There's a online realm and there's a, the real life realm all around us, and I think food really anchors us. It's like the idea of getting 20 people together in a room. It's always, we perceive it as really magical.

Radim Malinic: You and I were born in the same decade, actually not too far from each other. I'm thinking when you're describing this sort of pre-screen time and now with the screen time and di not at the age of digital natives. When you and I were growing up, I would like to assume that the food and our tables was very similar.

There was not too much of a performance, there was not too much of a theater about food. It was functional. It was in some way basic and it was not trying too much but now I would love to believe that there's so much theater about food. And is it because. We were longing for it, we needed it. Is it because we know more is because that's the minimum viable dinner, if that makes sense. Because I think we got two polar opposite.

We got the comfort food, we got fast food, and then we've got food excellence and then something in the middle which is some consumer food and, but we make at home, this is sort of me simplifying all of this, but I'm really trying to find the way, like how does the food theater come from?

Is it because there's the space, there's necessity, there's curiosity, or is it all of the above combined?

Caroline Hobkinson: I think it's such a kind of beautiful shorthand to get to know people as well. And nowadays we can. It's this endless videos on TikTok about what I eat in the day and people love watching that. It's like they love watching food shows. The idea of the performative eating element is very much there.

And I think that's obviously through social media that's heightened because obviously there was nothing food was much more private. And I think now it's much more on the realm of what people are eating and people are not eating as well. It's like the idea of that's a constant endless fascination.

But I think that's something that has shifted a lot, I think through social media and people living out their life online. And it's very clinical, but I think when it comes down to food, certainly it conjures up different flavors and smells, although I can't actually yet. Like transport that through the screen, but just almost the autosuggestion of the smell of the coffee or someone preparing food up close and the abundance of food.

 It's it's very hyper personal. It's almost the way food is prepared is almost pornographic in that way. There's a certain, like glistening in your face like abundance of the way people use food in that way. And it's very bonding and it, cuts right through a clinical notion of.

Because, yeah, it's, it is, food is obviously multisensory. It has a smell. It has a sound. It has a taste and obviously that gives, its well rise to countless A SMR videos of people chewing food. Something that's been for millennia perceived as embarrassing and disgusting is suddenly is seen as someone preparing food and the minute detail of sound captured where people are chewing or eating and preparing food is something yes.

Again, very intimate and there's an intimacy. I think it's almost a countertrend to the loneliness epidemic of people are sharing those moments because when you spend most of the time on that realm of the. The online realm where we, feel like we are bonding with complete strangers, and the majority of people I see, I have more screen time with people I follow online than actual real friends, but these are strangers to my life.

But I know what they eat, they're sharing their life with me. And depending on like how unhinged I am, I wouldn't say I spend so much time on there. I see them more than my closest friends, but, and I have such intimate details of their life, how they prepare, how they take their coffee, whether they're going through things.

But I think that's a, it's short term and people are, that's as well used and abused by different brands in order to create that really close bond.

Radim Malinic: you said that the preparation of food is almost pornographic, but I think pornography can the term could be almost pursued as not real, but to you, what you described it, again, we talk about perceptions.

You described as almost this vulgar in your face, intimate experience rather than when you've got food. Porn is more like, this is the stuff you might never make because it's out of your realm. Your food's never gonna be this good looking or whatever. So in that perception, and you talk about the A MSR, a lot has changed. Like we the more of is on show. and when you were talking about this in your answer, I was thinking how many seasons of chef's Table I've watched and how many of knife edge episode I've watched and all of those things. But what really fascinates me is that person who would go across the tallest mountain just to find a right leaf of parsley how they would go and just get the right ingredient and they say, look, I haven't seen my kids in six months because I'm trying to get this restaurant going.

I'm thinking, but also, I guess suppose someone has to do it there might be real people screaming at the, screen going, why would you do that? And then there'll be other people like, oh, well done. I understand you because we got two different perceptions. Again, how are these people so into their craft?

I wanna say obsessed, but obsession is one part of food. how would you give it so much? Because ultimately it's in a service of others because they could have easily done something for themselves differently.

Caroline Hobkinson: I find that passion, but I would say it's obviously, it's greed that makes us go and if you think about Spanish people and the Spanish ahma going over and trying to go towards. Americas, which not a hundred percent, knowing that the earth might fall off, but obviously they didn't go just to conquer new land.

They were literally driven by greed because someone showed them pictures of possible coffee and exotic fruits. And again, greed is what gets us to go to China because these guys have noodles there, they have rice. It's delicious. Let's go. And these were people who would leave their families behind not even knowing that the earth is round.

And that was of always I think humanity and mankind has always been driven by this greed of conquering new land. But the reason we go towards different places and. People were trying to make this incredible vast sea voyages with, because they were different. The promise of a pineapple, the promise of bringing back foods that we don't have.

And yeah, sugar and sweetness. And I think that's definitely something that makes the world go round. And I think the biggest commodities is like avocado followed by banana. I mean that's what the world economy is driven by food. So I think that's fascinating and I think it's greed, but it's good treat.

And that gets us closer. It's like finding the ultimate conquest is always that one flavor we haven't had yet is like the newest taste. It's I think humans and that's unites us all is that we are very greedy when it comes down to it.

Radim Malinic: That's really interesting you say greed, because I made a note. I said greed versus curiosity because I guess greed is not a gluttony but.

Is there greed versus curiosity? Because,

Caroline Hobkinson: Greed has been portrayed negative in the Judeo-Christian realm by Puritans, but the idea of greed is something that drives us forward. It's got a negative connotation, but it's just the idea of a, I would say it's a gatory curiosity. It is the idea of I'm just, yeah, hunger.

Hunger, like a good quest. Hunger quest. that makes us go and cross and like you go to Paris to find the best cross, all the flakies, cross all, you go to New York and you go to all the coffee bars to get the best cold drip coffee. It's beautiful, but it drives humankind and it makes us do things.

 The Romans built. Vineyards and they knew that in their lifetime they wouldn't taste the wine. But it makes us build things and, build vineyards for generations to come. And I think there's a beautiful sentiment towards the hunger quest, let's put it that way.

Radim Malinic: You are absolutely right. Greed has got negative connotation, but so does envy. Even though envy can be positive thing, envy can be a drive because it gives you a spur of what you could be or what you can do. I wanna talk about a fact how you said we can choose what we eat.

, We can choose which, like, how we curate our food and what we put into our mouth. But in the book titled Ultrapro People, there was a quote saying that we are currently a part of a wide experiment. We've got no control over, because the food manufacturers the producers supermarkets create food that we need to find enough food, or we need to create enough food for 8 billion people.

I don't wanna get too deep into u ups and that kind of stuff, but how would you find. This type of food that plays with our perception and potentially gives us less choice in a busy life to eat well or to to look after ourselves.

Caroline Hobkinson: Yeah, I think. Eating well. It's like or what passes our lips is like the last bastion of radical agency. And obviously feeding all the people in the world. Obviously it has limitations as well. And I think it has to do with intentionality. And I think the missing link is mindfulness and attention what.

We put through our lips as well. But I think there's a beautiful awareness as well when it comes down to when I think cow's milk or the production of cow's milk, people choose actively oat milk over cow's milk. Whether this is the answer or not, how we have actually agency through our food choices for environmental impact as well.

So a lot of people turn vegetarian because, not through personal taste preferences, but because of that, I think, and it's really interesting when it comes to anthropology, it's like the idea of traditionally we were not meant to eat meat and celebrate food every single day, their feast days, and they're fast days.

And if you look at different world religions and how we lived our life. We had lens, we had times of fastings that is in ingrained into humanity for centuries, for millennia. And now we are trying to find, I think, interval fasting as if this is like the latest new trends. But it's always been imposed on us.

And I think it's, the idea of the hyper convenience, which started off in the fifties. I think we are seeing the end of this time as well, where food is just there. The idea of plenty and the idea of scarcity and using up every single morsel and sometimes having bigger fasting windows as well is something that is.

hundred years ago, everyone would ly agree. Of course you have a fasting window and you don't eat a big meal and a feast every single day. And it's the intentionality, the anticipation of creating a feast, looking forward to it as well. Looking forward to that meal and meeting people and coming together over breaking bread rather than having this very, individualized eating of hyper convenience.

I think hopefully we'll see an end to it as well. Obviously it's sadly it's driven by socioeconomic restrictions as well because obviously when I talk about intentionality, obviously it is very much, of course it is about how to make that accessible to wider mass of people rather than the chosen few who can choose to individually source their food as well.

And I think there's a lot of possibility as well because obviously those scarcities and the problems are. They're becoming bigger problems as well. It's like how can we have limit food miles? And there are a lot of community gardens, hydroponics, where we are growing food much more locally as well and with much more intention.

Radim Malinic: You mentioned the experience of seclusion when we consume our food, because I feel through our screens, we've never been more connected to different types of food, different curiosities potentially exercise our greed in a way of what is there where I can find and what sort of experiences can I have?

But. Is it the arrival of the medium has given us greater choices of where we can work, but has actually divided us more than ever because we can hide in our own spaces and still be connected through a screen, but we are losing that 

social contact.

Caroline Hobkinson: I completely agree that we are, I think by living so much of our lives on our screen, we are creating a double life. There are two different realms. There's the realm of our online life and there's a real life. Life. And I think it's about food. It's almost like the missing anchor that can, it's an axis that connects the two, realms as well because obviously there's a loneliness epidemic.

Obviously I have kids who, for me, sometimes we go loneliness sounds like a really wonderful thing as well. I love, I yearn to be lonely, but obviously that's different to, and a lot of people in their twenties, they work incredibly long hours on a screen. And that coffee moment I mentioned with the communion, it's one of the only human to human touchpoints or getting your sandwich.

And I think that's. The idea of actually sharing bread and getting together into the real room. It's such a kind of hyper real moment of our existence as well, where we perceive certain flavors, we can't escape from it because obviously screen-based interactions are very clinical. I have a lot of agency about how I'm perceived.

I can put the light on, I can modulate the sound, the microphone. But food is really real and you can't escape that sense of reality. And I think that of experienced lift reality, there's no VR for food. It's, food doesn't exist in the metaverse and AI can't actually explain taste and flavor to us.

And I think that's gonna be more and more the intimate of having meals together and I think. Even how brands are now interacting with a consumer is through those bespoke dining experiences or dinners where they put them together. And I think that's exactly why they're using it as well.

Radim Malinic: That was a fantastic segue exactly to put in spotlight on what you do because you do work with brands. You create experiences, you curate their taste, their crunch, their smell, their flavors in this ultimate luxury. So what do you do in terms of work and how do you take a client?

How do you devise an event? Can you tell us more about what you do

Caroline Hobkinson: I like to curate different dining experiences. It's not just dining experience. I think they're more immersive experiences and teaching people how to be more present and creating those boundaries as well of how we perceive what comes physically towards us and not, and I think the idea of taking food in is a really good learning experience to talk about these things.

But it comes from creating high-end dinners where everything is a beautiful choreography. It's again about having the control, about changing people and explaining more wonder to the world of creating beautiful bespoke soundscapes. I am working with Sony Paris, where creating a dinner in September.

But next Tuesday we are gonna create a sowing ritual where we are sowing all the seeds of the dinner we are eating. Into Rooftop Garden on a rooftop in Paris. So it's very much about the intentionality. We are taking bio notification of the individual seats. That means that there's a little electric signals.

Every seat has, especially a seat just before it's bursting. Has a lot of really powerful energy. I was working with a sound artist who created the sound of those seeds, and then we are placing them during this sonic ritual where I have a fantastic actress. So she's the personification of Gaia of Nature, where she's reciting poetry, planting the seeds, and then we are gonna have little cameras showing the sprouting of the seeds.

And then we are going to eat the very food on a rooftop in Paris in September. So it's very much about the intentionality of intent and awareness seeing how that actually impacts the taste as well.

Radim Malinic: It is worth saying this, it reminded me of David Burns book which is titled How Music Works. And he said that the music is one of the mediums that just happens at that time, of course, that you can have a recorded music, but when the music is being played, it's just a performance of that moment there and then, and when you talk about your dinners, it's that experience there.

And then you can't, you can take a little bit in your doggy bank and go look what I've got, but. It just stays in the room. Like you can't, you bring home with your experiences, your, the remnants of the taste. how would you prolong that experience?

Or do you ever get sad that experience has got started and finish? Because I love that you're planting your seeds on the roof garden and then doing this, but again, there's a gap between like how do you create that sense of weight and, but like, how do you feel about the experience because it, it has to finish.

Caroline Hobkinson: Yeah, I think you completely hit the nail on the head there. I am completely fascinated the idea of you have so much preparation, so much intention, and then you have the meal and then in 50 minutes it's gone. Poof. It's completely ephemeral. And for me that is the beauty of it. So maybe there's some sort of the vanita element of, it's that piece of music.

You practice and practice and then you have one performance and that's just it. It's gone. It's time. Like music is just a timekeeper. It's just telling us this moment of time and life music. That's why I like working with life music because it's like life eating. You can't take that away. No picture will ever do it.

Justice is just there and it's gone. And a time when we are trying to create content. We are always just rather than creating memories, we just capture memories. And I think it's really important and it's so powerful just to create a memory, not capture it. It's put the phone away. So I think that's really powerful.

The idea of going to a nightclub is working with Lost Nightclub here Fabian Miguel from Secret Cinema. And it's really simple, but we all have that experience of going to nightclub without a phone and losing all your friends. But it's so powerful to put the phone away and just get lost in the moment.

 You can't create, you can't have pictures. There's no content. There's no memory. It's just in us. And I think a beautiful meal is exactly, you can't capture it. It's yeah, music as well, because music and food just goes, it bypasses any rational thought. It goes straight to our souls. Like that music that taste gets to us.

We don't have to think about it. It's like we don't have to be educated about, it's, very democratic. Of course, there's so much knowledge about food, but. We all taste and we all know we eat all the time. So I love that. I think it's really powerful. But yeah, it is I love that.

It's like the idea of so much intention and then it's just gone.

Radim Malinic: Yeah, because I think there must be a differences in character. Some people want this to go on forever and some people go, okay, this, there's a hard stop, and we'll see what happens. Because I think the older I get, the experience has happened in such a compressed and compact space. And then it takes me days to unpack it.

Just literally go, oh, that's what happened. Did you remember this bit? And you remember that bit? Because let's say yes, got to meet for my Creative Supper club. And for me it was just like, how do we just bring people back in the room? And how do we create something and try, in my opinion, this uberification of the experience?

I've looked at the experience going okay, how do we get people to enjoy themselves? How do we get people not to worry about a final bill? how do we not get to worry about X, Y, Z and trying to literally create this experience, but all we have to do is to show up and have a good time

and can go home. 

Caroline Hobkinson: I think unpacking an experience like a dining experience or any kind of beautiful music experience is, I think that what drives communication. It's the best gossip. unpacking those moments are exactly the touch point of what makes us human.

It's what did you experience? And the change in perception that's just like what drives gossip? What drives good chat? What drives us? Because otherwise, I think it's just boring communication. But I think that's what's humans. We started talking when we were sitting around a fire.

 People obviously told stories as well, but unpacking experience of what happened during the day when people were hunting a buffalo. That's completely it. I think. It's like what happened and just describing certain different experiences. It's the most beautiful way of coming together. Having one good experience and then sitting for weeks afterwards and unpacking it.

It's exactly what bonds friendships together.

Radim Malinic: When you speak about experiences, it made me think about. The more than just one sense as of a taste. So you got, obviously you mentioned you work with sound engineers and sound artist, but then you've got obviously the sense of touch. You got a sense of smell and then you've got the ambience, obviously you've got a room and other planning.

So how do you create the experience that play to all senses and how do achieve Because I would like to believe that not everything all the time is in your control. So how do you go around an airplane to all five senses?

Caroline Hobkinson: Yeah. I like to control the choreography. Our perception is an intricate choreography, and I think we all know this, like between attention, memory, sensory motor, and emotion, and then it's core to who you are. And it's our reality. It's our own inner our world, and we use our bodies. To make sense of it.

So because no two people perceive in the same way. So we obviously have the, and we have obviously driven senses, like sound is the fastest that cuts through it. It's like the fastest sense that gets straight to it. So sound is really powerful. And then we have obviously sight side is obviously very over overwritten because there's such an onslaught visuals as well.

And then smell and food obviously often people talk about flavor, but obviously that's an interesting interlink between taste and smells. Like the idea of when we have cinnamon and next time you have cinnamon and you close your nose, you can't taste cinnamon. Cinnamon is a flavor, it's obviously very closely linked and the close interlinked between the senses. So it's called cross modalities. Like the idea of one doesn't informs the other and other thing, but all these senses are how we. How we calibrate our existence. how I perceive the world.

So obviously food is beautiful because it's an intricate choreography of all those touch points. Like the tactics of eating something with your hands or just even weighing a, putting it straight into a mouth or using different things. And I think that's really beautiful to choreograph that.

Obviously it's a choreography that is used every single day. We go through this choreography, but obviously sometimes we have those feasts, which we prepare more, but it's still very like different of it's funny how universal it is. We most people eat with a, for. it's such a weird random food, inclement, but it's, why are we eating with a folk and folks all look the same and try to eat with a folk that's bamboo shaped or like wooden?

It feels really disgusting. It's like there's a certain mouth feel to it and it never worked. So it's amazing how conservative we are when it comes to food because it is such an intricate, subliminal choreography that we are used to. There's a certain moment of that as well. It's like there's a food, like there's a certain most dining tables are exactly centimeters. If there's 95, it feels weird. So it's amazing how universal all of that is calibrated all over the world.

Radim Malinic: How do you curate a journey for your guests, for your diners, and how do you create the highs and lows in the experiences?

Caroline Hobkinson: I think creating immersive experiences a lot about the onboarding as well. It's like obviously the, the moment the experience starts as well. When you work with brands, it's, it's very important to say the moment you accept the invitation, the moment you send the email invitation, that's when it starts as well.

So it's very much about understanding and. Letting people surrender towards the experience, but never breaking that moment of trust. It's like even if you say that's an almost bush, it's like, so trust is really important because obviously I'm willing to lean, fall backwards and let myself fall, but only if I know that definitely that is not there and the moment that trust is broken when it comes to branding or experiences, then people lose that sense of trust.

But I think because we are so much in control of everything, we are yearning and we have so much choice. It's very important to actually work with that surrender moment of. I trust you to curate that experience for me. And people really love that. Like when it comes to working with a lot of retreats as well recently on radical wellness, people are willing to surrender a lot.

And you feel really, do you gonna let me be in the sauna? Ask, like I can ask people to be for half an hour in the sauna, but as long as the trust is not broken, as long as they know that I have a perfectly choreographed soundscape to keep them in the sauna, to do this, to give them something cooling in the end, that needs to be really tight.

And that trust needs to be onboarded, needs to be established, but never broken. And then you can get people out of their usual state. But I think that is definitely something that. Surrendering towards other people's. Creating that experience is, is definitely a big thing. And creating that experiences where I don't have to be in control all the time, because otherwise we don't get lost in our own city because we have obviously Google Maps.

 I can review every restaurant, but like the idea of just create something in there. And I think one of the nicest dining experiences people say is there something special? It's 15 years ago I created a dining experience in a Masonic temple, but we picked people up from their home, so they never knew where it was.

But it's not something super secretive, but it's more like we sent taxis to them and the journey started in the taxi, but they remained blindfolded. During the time, 15 years later, they still go oh my God, you did this dinner. I still remember it. I never knew it was that sense of disorientation and surrendering and not knowing who else was there.

So the idea of anonymity as well throughout that, it's really powerful as well. It's I think it's because such an onslaught of information of our location, our location, share exactly what's happening, to give away so much of that tracking of everything and just to give into something.

It's beautiful. But I think food is if you've ever had that experience, someone placing food directly into your mouth, that is something that is so incredibly awkward and intimate. But it is a really fun moment as well.

Radim Malinic: I love that you leading me with these really important words to my next question because you talked about trust and there's again, we talk about personal perception of like we got personal perception of trust because societal perception of trust. And so we have the same, a bit belief, same opinions about food.

Not everyone loves the same, not everyone trusts the same. So when you're creating these, not these experiences, you need to almost trust yourself and trust the onboarding process that the people who will show up will actually be open to surrender because. I would like to believe, or at least that was my perception when I was young, that everyone ate everything.

It was not complicated diet, but it felt like there was some people who didn't like, let's say dill or something there was that sort of school meal that everyone was like, no, we don't eat this. But everyone ate everything. And it felt like it was more level. And now we've got our preferences we've got, obviously we found out more about intolerances.

We found out more about what people what they dislike, what they could eat, what they shouldn't eat, what they mustn't eat. It creates a very complex situation and then in my opinion, when you try then create the experience for a group of people, how do you prepare yourself for individualities and individual sort of perceptions?

Caroline Hobkinson: I think it's beautiful to play with that idea of individual preferences, but I think because we are so aware that we are being manipulated all the time when it comes to content and sound and everything. So that's why I think food, as I said earlier, is the last bastion of. radical agencies, like the idea of when people say, what are your food preferences?

Every server now in the world has to ask you, do you have any allergies? Before even giving you something like this is very much it's almost heightened because almost I'm provoked to be hyper aware of what passes my lips. But I think food is the only thing that literally becomes us because sound comes and goes but.

the phone and like sound never enters your bloodstream, food enters my bloodstream. It becomes energy. it becomes part of me. But food forces us to be present as well. So I think the idea of personal preferences because it's the only way that we can actually have that radical agency.

I can say no to what passes my lips, but I can't, obviously we have headphones. I can have. Noise canceling headphones, but not a hundred percent. Like the cacophony and the sound of the world is constantly around us and we are being bombarded by content and we are subscribed.

We are paying dearly for that content. Like from Netflix, all the streaming devices dating is like about swiping left and center. It's all visual as well. So I think it's really interesting. But food is it is a last question of where like where we can define of who we are and I can say no, it's a node towards not engaging with it.

And I think obviously on the darker side, that leads us well to the rise of eating disorders because Of course people always had eating disorder, But the incredible rise of that is because people are saying no and being in control over, over that and exerting their control over their environment.

Radim Malinic: It makes me think of preconceptions of what we think eat, be, don't mean what we like, what we dislike, and sometimes it just hasn't happened in the right way. We haven't been served particular thing in a particular way that we might like it. And I'll give you personal story, which I put in my second book, which was called the coriander story.

 And for some reason I felt coriander is not something I like. And I remember having my first poke bowl. And it was the salmon, Hawaiian salmon bowl quinoa and all of that stuff. And they basically poke ball is like a posh subway. Like what you, you kind create your own bowl and ask, do you want this, do you want that?

And she says, oh, coriander. And somehow I said yes to coriander. So the coriander made into my food bowl. And I'm not in, because I've been England at that time for about 20 years. So I'm like, of course, yeah, I'm dying on the inside. I had to eat coriander for the next 15, 20 minutes. But the recipe was fantastic.

The recipe, it just worked. The flavor was part of a symphony of, this dance, which worked together. And I was like, okay, it hasn't converted me, but it hasn't necessarily made me dislike it anymore. It was like, okay, this belongs here. Someone actually put it in the right place it, it's got its space.

And I tried to then do that sort of same thing with. My clients, not with coriander, but the, idea of something that they dislike because it's it's almost like their say they feel like they have got to disagree with something. So I would then challenge them and when they say, I don't really like yellow, I don't really like this, I don't particularly think this is for us, I'm like actually in the right way, everything could be right.

So I just finding new ways of like, how do you create this concoction of 

 ingredients that actually come together?

Caroline Hobkinson: But I think it's such a beautiful allergy as well. It's like breaking preconceptions is a big thing for me. And I think it's exactly that. It's your coriander stories about breaking preconceptions. We think we know something. But I think when it comes to perceptions and the sensory triggers, and I'm working with, it's like the idea of, I never experienced and never perceived it as such because it's all about just perceptionist.

Like the idea of blue can look red if you perceive it in the same way. And playing with that, it's just a momentary standpoint of what you have. Obviously. Yeah. Koreana often tastes to a lot of people like socks or like old socks. But I think given the right time and space, it can be different. And I think it's beautiful to have, and I love working with clients or working with people and changing conception or the breaking the preconceptions or something.

It's like the idea of yes. Actually, I don't like white wine. But actually if you color it and you perceive it as red wine, suddenly you read it as something different. And I think there's such a beautiful unilateral learning experience to how we perceive and how we position ourselves in the world.

And without becoming too political, it's really important to, to be more open towards it and using food as being more open towards different experiences as well.

Radim Malinic: When did you realize that this could be your work business livelihood. When did you realize on that journey of daring creativity? To me, you don't live a regular life because what you're telling me how you live, how you perceive what you create is that beautiful sort of fringe of the society.

You're creating things that are not always for the many, but in I would like to believe, inspire a lot. So when did you realize, this is your business?

Caroline Hobkinson: I think I realized that, obviously I always wanted it to do that. I think it's like the idea of immersiveness and cross modalities and working with a census and immersing people in an experience is something that I've been going on for 20 years now. Obviously immersion and immersive experiences, if you look on Eventbrite is one of the big categories.

I think I just. Started working in that niche. And the more you work in the niche, suddenly it is not a niche, it's a mainstream thing that's really great. But 16 years ago, I was I have a place in Berlin and I wanted to commemorate the fall off the wall and I created half of my apartment into the eastern block of Berlin and half of it in the Western block because I wanted people to feel a lot of Americans and expats and English people were there, what it felt to be living in a divided city.

So I created the Sspa Club at the time and I thought that'd be really fun. So people can't, they get allocated to the eastern or the western sector. And I thought, that's a really good show and tell. and then the New York Times actually picked up and they wrote an article about this and I thought, you know what?

This is not just a sap by club I'm doing on the side while I'm a creative. It's this is what I wanna be doing. I wanna tell stories through food and actually using food as a. entry point to change people's perception and create experiences with that rather than working with it.

So I was really lucky so far that different brands or different projects allow me to do this, but I think it's as well the way that I think social media and the world changed that now we are much more onboarded towards immersive experiences and creating experiences is a complete, legitimate way of living and making a living.

Radim Malinic: For your experiment in Berlin, did you get people upset about being at East Berlin or Berlin? 

Caroline Hobkinson: as a tongue and sheet experiences actually for the Berlin experience, I made the Eastern menu more exciting because obviously traditionally people wanted the western. food, and obviously it was there as goes with with lobster and really beautiful food of the plenty.

But actually then I had, like for the eastern sector, we started with Soka and everything. So towards the end people wanted to break out and it's really interesting. Yeah. But because again, I think it's about surrendering towards the choice because we are so used to having the choice, especially when you have paying customers, people always want to be given the choice because we are so used to the choice, and it's very important about the onboarding and the communication that this is, or if you work with different retreats or experiences, if the onboarding is right, people are completely under the understanding that.

 I'm surrendering towards your choreography. I give up my choice so you don't understand that I can change the sector and I'm enjoying the fact that I've been allocated to the sector because that very much, that allocation is part of the experience of that lift experience to a lot of Berliners where people just drew a line and it's just random.

Radim Malinic: I like the word surrenders. Come back again. Because ultimately, yes, we are paying customers, but we do surrender to what's available in a way. sometimes they make provisions and they make something of menu. Okay, I want something that you haven't got because of certain reasons or certain preferences.

But yeah, you are right. Surrenders. I, I, had not thought about. Previous conversation that this word would be so important to what we do or what we talk about here, because surrender is partially what is required with food. Because I see surrender again, and we talk about, for example, the words like greed or envy.

Like I feel surrender is positive and negative because you can surrender in very positive way and go Hey, surprise me, make me feel something.

Caroline Hobkinson: Yeah, but it's not giving up control. It's not giving up control. You surrender under the clear understanding it's trust. I think that's why I think. Surrender needs to come in with trust. So I think it's really interesting. Completely. On a side note, I I think there's a lot of interesting learning as well, like when they, there's a book about kink and obviously surrender is used sometimes in, different format. It's about trust, so people, even when it comes to weird sexualities, then not weird, sexual, sexual encounters, people have safe words, so it's very much there's a certain boundaries in that, but sometimes obviously as a normal.

Consumer, you don't think about this, but if I I surrender towards a brand, I believe in the brand, otherwise I could just make it myself. If I go to a restaurant, if I order off the menu, I could just do it myself. I think it's we are sometimes trying to think that we wanna keep our individuality and having a big flex of ordering of menu, but that defies the object of going to this beautiful restaurant and surrendering towards it.

Or if I'm surrendering towards a brand, towards a cut of a jeans, that's just the way they're cut. If I'm asking them to change it, it completely becomes nonsensical towards that trust bond you create with a brand as well. But I think, yeah, the word surrender is really important, but it is about onboarding and trust.

Appreciating that moment that you're surrendering and giving up that certain moment of hyper control because we are so overloaded by choice when it comes to eating and food because obviously there is so much, plenty, it's actually really beautiful that to go to someone's place and having something cooked for you based on your preference because they, it's such a beautiful gestures.

Like I thought you might enjoy that and I want to share that, taste with you. It's a really beautiful, it's a ultimate gestures, so again, it's an experience rather than a commodity of buying someone something. The most expensive thing.

Radim Malinic: It's beautifully said. I can only finish this conversation with quote that's on your website, which says, food explains our status and identity. the table is a place where we become aware of who we are around the table or previous meals come together in an endless succession of memories and future associations.

Caroline, I'm a fan of what you do and I can't wait to, in some way collaborate have another supper club of collaboration or something because you made me think about so many different parallels, and I hope that also works for all the listeners because what you do plays to all senses. and I'm excited that people like you exist because you can show us what we can do beyond the realms of possible.

So thank you.

Caroline Hobkinson: Thank you for having me on. Lovely to chat.