2009-2014 __ 2015-2019 _____2020-2025
Vegeterianism - Xevi Verdaguer __ JapanLife-BcnNaturalWine _____ Inst.PostNaturalStudies·FoodComsogonies - Dr.JDrain - MayaMinder·Biohacking - EU·JP·Art&Gastronomy
In 2014, while looking for small, practical ways to care for my unremitting “brain digestion,” I attended a university talk by Xevi Verdaguer. He spoke about gut health, which led me to wander through Barcelona’s bio-vegetarian shops asking for kombucha—I thought it was just another kind of tea.
Between 2015 and 2017, I lived in Japan. I still didn’t know the word kōji, but miso paste, tsukemono and soy sauce soon found a quiet place in my daily cooking routines.
Still guided by Donna Haraway’s work, I discovered, in 2020, the Institute for Post-Natural Studies. I attended their online introductory seminar on the concept of Post-Nature, followed by a series of other experimental seminars between 2021–2022. Those online encounters created space for multidisciplinary conversations about nature, ecology and art. Through them,I joined the seminars of Food Cosmogonies, a group that brings together people from various research disciplines to explore issues related to food, and that proposes nourishing conceptual intersections and discussions for rethinking both food and the act of cooking.
In the summer of 2021, I spent a week at Boisbuchet with Dr. Johnny Drain. His atelier was hands-on and welcoming; everyone there seemed interested in cooking with microbes, with otherness—and not just cooking for flavor and texture, but for enriching the togetherness of cooking and being micro-nourished.
Before and since then, I have kept exploring. Some of my highlights include: a small workshop with AdondeLab in Paris in 2024, where I had my first BabyKojiRice; the discovery of the concept of natural wine in a Franco-Spanish cave in Barcelona’s Eixample in 2019; the Women in Fermentation three-day program with Kirsten Shockey, Mara King, Jelena Belgrave, and Eleni Michael in London in 2023; several visits to the Mediamatic project in Amsterdam between 2021 and 2024; a counter in Kyoto in 2023 where dishes from many fermenting traditions share the same tiny kitchen; meeting Maya Minder and tasting her Art in Paris in 2021; being amazed when stepping into Silo, a zero-waste restaurant, in 2022; experiencing Claire Vallée’s rich and delicious plant-based menu in Nantes in the winter of 2025 — and so on, and so on, and so on…
Even today, I found richly flavored coffee from Colombia that includes kōji in its composition!
These experiences—and those yet to come—sit with me like quiet cultures in a jar: slowly changing, always alive, never demanding spectacle.