The future is typically not my business. This is not to say it isn’t of interest but, as a historian, it is not part of my job profile to imagine it. This is why the work of Katinka Versendaal—a food designer and “gastronomic futurologist”—makes me curious. What Katinka proposes with her food design studio—the Eatelier—moves beyond forecasting culinary trends. This is not about looking at the past and using it as a crystal ball to predict future outcomes. Instead, Katinka applies speculative design thinking to gastronomy to ask: is this the future we want?

It was a pleasure to interview Katinka for The Preserve Journal. Preview issue 6 here.