SK Kerastas and Chef Valen Sparks present

Silent Dinner: Bless the Food

This Silent Dinner is a distinctly collective, distinctly individual, distinctly Midwest dinner experience cooked and served for 12 people at bim bom studios, on Sunday July 28th. Please arrive at 5:45pm to begin the meal at 6:00pm.

The event is a collaboration between Links Hall Executive Director, SK Kerastas and Bless the Food Chef, Valen Sparks. Valen’s work explores food as a link between past, future, nature, and memory through multisensory culinary experiences.

At the start of the event, guests will be guided to set aside their phones, offered light instruction and text, and invited into silence for the duration of a multi-course vegetarian meal. In creating an environment with less distraction, participants are encouraged to relax into the sensations of eating – the sights, smells, sounds, textures, and tastes. In his Eating a Tangerine meditation, Thich Nat Hahn says that we can “look deeply to see the wonders of the earth and sky in what we are eating and drinking. We can see the hard work and all the causes and conditions that have brought us into this moment, and gratitude and wonder naturally arises.” The food becomes, “an ambassador of the cosmos.”

The vegetarian menu will be conceived and cooked by Chef Valen Sparks.

Organizers will communicate directly with guests around dietary restrictions. 

The dinner experience will last roughly 90 minutes. 

We are selling individual seats to this special meal. 

Organizer Bios

Valen Sparks is a granddaughter of the Great Migration hailing from Chicago, a food writer, and the founder of Bless the Food. Valen leans on her Midwestern heritage paying homage to ancestral food traditions combined with modern flavor interpretations, food preservation, and cooking techniques. Valen’s menus are inspired by seasonal and local produce sourced directly from farmer’s markets and local purveyors whenever possible.

SK Kerastas (they/them) is the current Executive Director of Links Hall. They are a justice-driven live arts leader, community organizer, and artist rerooted back home in Chicago after 8+ years in the SF Bay Area. They have organized with the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, East Bay Meditation Center, and Dhamma Dena Meditation Center.