Jasmin Lefers

Hi, Jasmin. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for such a long time, so it’s great. It’s nice to see you.

Thank you. I’m excited and a little bit scared.

No, don’t be scared.

I know. It’s always one of those things where I’m thinking, “Why does anyone want to talk to me?” But I think it’s great. You’ve suggested it a couple of times when we’ve done different events you’ve attended even though you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into.

I actually met you almost ten years ago, when you were head chef at Wine 1160. I was writing about it for Concrete Playground. Then we discovered we’ve got all these two-degrees-of-separation connections.

Yes, lots of mutual friends, which is pretty funny. Then I think you came to one of my many ideas. I wanted to start a wine portfolio, and I did food to match the wines. That didn’t get very far because there weren’t enough really good restaurants in the area to warrant people signing up to the wines. But you came to that, and I did the food.

I’d also been to the little design market before then and done too many tastings. I think I was unruly at your event.

No. I feel like that one just didn’t translate well for the population.

You were head chef at Wine 1160, but you were already doing events and immersive things. What are you? Do you call yourself a chef, a food designer or an immersive-experience curator?

Any time someone calls me a chef, I’m like, “I’m not a chef,” because I don’t have the official formal training. My background is as a cook. I’ve always cooked. Even when I was little, I used to cook for my grandparents and my parents. When I was tiny, with pigtails and pink ribbons, I used to bake bread every Sunday for the whole family for the week, just because I loved plating it and putting seeds on it. But just a cook. With the support of my partner, Azzi, I went in the direction of food design. I found this wonderful person in the Netherlands who does online food-design playgrounds.

Is that Marije Vogelzang?

Yes. I learned a lot from her. I learned that I was already doing some things that were naturally food design, because I like to mess with people’s senses and change the way they think and feel about eating. That was awesome for me. I also learned other things from her that I put into play, like cutting off one sense and concentrating on the others that we might not use so much in relation to food. I learned a lot through that. I did it for about a year, probably just coming out of COVID. The timing was horrible because I was getting up for live Zoom sessions from 2.00 to 4.00 am, twice a week.

Marije describes herself as an eating designer, which is different from a food designer. What is the difference?

I don’t know that much about it, but when people think about food design, you can go back to the industrialisation of food: mass-produced chips or Pringles. Why do they make them hot? Why do you get the smell out of the can when you first open it? Why do we serve people in aged-care homes food on certain-coloured platters? Research has shown that it makes them eat more.

Food design, I guess, can go more along those lines: the industrialisation of food and the psychology of food and eating. Eating design may be an entirely different thing, where food isn’t so chemically altered. For me, the industrialisation of food is where we get all our emulsifiers and everything else that lengthens the so-called shelf life and stability of food. Eating design is perhaps a more natural element of food design. It isn’t about enhancing shelf life; it’s about the eating experience and creating an experience for someone.

When you were doing the online sessions, did you come with questions or did you allow her to lead you down the path?

She’s excellent. It’s a beautifully structured course, with a different topic every week. It might be the history of bread. You see that every culture has bread and wonder how all these different races and cultures have similarities such as dumplings or bread. Each week had a themed topic, and then you went away and did homework. She always left about ten to fifteen per cent of the session at the end as a free-for-all for questions. I think there were up to twenty of us on the Zoom calls. During the course, we were also allocated two one-on-one half-hour sessions to talk about whatever we were doing. It was really cool.

What did you want to achieve by doing it? Did you have an idea of what you would use it for, or was it to support ideas you already had?

For me, it was about looking at what I could do. You have ideas, and a lot of people have ideas, but very few of us follow them through to fruition because, A, you don’t know how, or, B, you’re not ballsy enough to throw them out there and basically live or die. It was a way of learning how to approach and structure things, and how to use methods she taught, such as working with the senses. I could see how to incorporate that into ideas I already had, make them better and make them more appealing. I got a lot out of it. It was really good.

Any time someone calls me a chef, I’m like, “I’m not a chef,” because I don’t have the official formal training. My background is as a cook. I’ve always cooked. Even when I was little, I used to cook for my grandparents and my parents. When I was tiny, with pigtails and pink ribbons, I used to bake bread every Sunday for the whole family for the week, just because I loved plating it and putting seeds on it. But just a cook. With the support of my partner, I went in the direction of food design.

Jasmin Lefers

I feel like you’re so creative and really artistic as well. Where do you get your ideas for your installations and experiences?

That’s a really good question. I don’t know. I just think of things. I’ll be walking around and think, “Why don’t I just do that?” Take the mushroom event I did at Melbourne Fringe last year. It was probably one of the first events I did after the food-design courses where I concentrated more on what I’d learned. I created mushrooms as a sensory experience, with five different stations for the five senses. One was purely sight, then taste, touch, sound and so on, all about mushrooms. That was me using what I’d learned. You can take just one sense, focus on it and create an event around it. I think we had about 120 people come through over six sessions. It was amazing that people were receptive to an idea that was a little bit crazy. Unfortunately, it coincided with the whole mushroom-poisoning story, which was kind of detrimental, but 120 people still showed up and put their faith in me. The reception was awesome.

Then I was lucky enough to be engaged to do a private dinner for Melbourne Design Week. We did it with Dowel Jones, and everything looked like kraft paper. I spent a long time on research and development, making rye-cracker plates and knives out of rye-cracker dough. It looked amazing. We had kraft paper down, then a kraft-coloured plate and knife. It was fun to watch people work out that they had to break apart the plate to eat the duck rillette or mushroom pate. That was another amazing one. I was very proud of it. It’s probably the one I’m most proud of. I made heirloom brooches using a food-safe moulding material from a craft shop. I made moulds from antique brooches and then created chocolates from them. I said to people, “You have to choose one of these heirlooms, and you have to choose the one you want to be with you forever, because once you eat it and digest it, it’s within your body.”

It becomes part of you.

Yes. Things like that were really awesome. I don’t know, I just think of something and say, “This is a cool idea.” I guess I’m lucky that I don’t mind backing myself. If it works, amazing. If it doesn’t, I think, “Cool. What did you learn from it?”

Your food is delicious as well. When you hear someone talking about these things as art and experience, sometimes the food isn’t delicious, but yours is. Is that important to you?

One hundred per cent. I love food. I always have. I love flavour, taste and texture. I love differences in texture and the sounds you can get from eating certain foods. I’ve found these incredible lollipops that I want to use at my next event. They use bone conduction. As you suck the lollipop, I can pre-program what you hear inside your own skull. You put headphones in, suck the lollipop, and I can either play you a tune or speak to you. I don’t know exactly how it works, but it’s awesome and I really want to use it.

That sounds quite Black Mirror. I was at your Tide Table event, and it was such a good example of the way you commit so wholeheartedly to a project months in advance. I don’t think you could have done any more. The layers of thought were incredible: the projections on the floor and ceiling, the sounds, the seaweed, the cocktail with an ice cube suspended inside another ice cube, and the fact that you couldn’t find the plates you wanted, so you made your own algae-inspired plates.

Years ago, I thought I might try pottery because, as someone who plates food, I thought I might enjoy it. It’s a bit like making pastry. I love it. I thought it might translate, but I never did anything about it. For the seaweed event, I wanted beautiful organic plates for the pasta with the cold soup, the nori butter and things like that, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I thought, “Now is your chance.” Six months before the event, I started making the plates and cups. I textured every cup individually, with tide-like marks and slip that created dots like a sea urchin. When people picked up their warm broth on entry, they could feel the warmth coming through the cup as well as the different textures from the slips. I learned a lot, and they worked incredibly well. Out of more than sixty plates, I lost only one, and that was because I didn’t realise it was there and threw the plastic down on the ground. Apparently, it’s unheard of to have that many pieces and not lose more when you fire them, so I was super proud.

Would I do things differently? Yes. I thought the cups were going to be a little bigger. Clay shrinks by around ten to fifteen per cent, and I didn’t realise it would be that much. But overall, I was pretty stoked.

It was amazing. The whole thing was so good. With those events, there’s obviously a big lead-up, six months or even more, developing the ideas and making them happen. Do you enjoy the night? Do you feel stressed?

I do enjoy it, and no, I don’t feel stressed. I think I used to get stressed before I started creating the events I wanted to do. If I was helping other people with big catering jobs, I found that stressful because it wasn’t my thing.

I don’t find my events stressful because I put in all the preparation time. It’s a unique experience, and the night itself is super rewarding because I get to see people’s initial reactions. I know straight away whether they love it, aren’t fussed or hate it. It isn’t stressful. It’s quite beautiful to see people’s reactions. I love that.

You’ve got an event coming up, don’t you?

I do. This is another one with a long lead-in time. I first trialled it four or five years ago, then COVID hit. Now I’m bringing it back, reinventing it and doing it in a much nicer, smoother and more designed and curated way. I’m pretty excited. I’m calling it KINK: Rude Food Experience, but I’m not sure that does it justice. I need vessels for some special foods that I’m making, and there’s zero chance I’ll find them anywhere else. I’m looking at getting a mould made, or I’ll make the mould, then make the vessels out of resin. I’m also playing around with mirrors, glass and all sorts of things.

This one will be good. It’s very provocative, and I think it will be quite challenging for people. When I did it previously, I thought, “It’s too much. Maybe I’ve gone over the top.” But the reception was really great, and the things I thought people would find most challenging were actually what they loved most. Sometimes we don’t give people enough credit or have enough faith in what they might want to experience and enjoy. This one will be small and intimate, with groups of between twenty and thirty. I don’t want to do more because it requires a lot of attention, and there’s a lot going on during the night.

Is it part of a larger festival, or is it your own event?

Like the mushroom event, it’s part of Melbourne Fringe. We’re doing it on 9, 10 and 11 October, at 7.00 pm on Friday and Saturday and 12.30 pm on Sunday. I’m just doing the three sessions. I’ve also got access to a little bar in the city, so if we get a great reception, we may roll it out there. We can probably seat twenty people. I think we’re going to do an Amy Winehouse pop-up wine bar in that space too, with a live trio and a theme. That would be really cool.

Ideas all the time! For things like Fringe and Melbourne Design Week, do you apply? Is there a lot of paperwork, or do they ask you? How does it work?

All of the above. With the first Melbourne Design Week event, they approached me through Dowel Jones. They were putting on a dinner for designers because Design Week is so full-on, and they wanted a chance to sit down, relax and talk to one another. We did it that way. This year, I put in a submission. It’s a lot of work. You have to think of the idea, narrow it down and be clear about what you want to do, what you want to achieve and what they will get out of it. You put in a submission, but it’s up to you to sell the tickets.

With Melbourne Fringe, you also put in a submission. They accepted me last year and this year. I don’t know how they review people, but two years in a row they’ve been happy to accept what I’ve put in, which is exciting.

Around all these amazing experiences, is your day job as a food stylist?

No. I don’t want to be a food stylist, with all the politics in that. I work in that world, but I do the food for the food stylist. If you’re putting a salad on a plate in front of a camera for a billboard or the back of packaging, I’ll get all the elements and cook them, or not, as required. I’ll hand-pick the prettiest tomatoes, the loveliest lettuce leaves or whatever else is needed, and put them on separate plates. The food stylist then compiles everything in front of the camera. I do the back-of-house work, and I’m happy with that. They do the on-camera work. I would much rather use my creativity in the way that gives me joy: thinking up my crazy ideas, putting them out into the world and seeing what kind of reception I get.

Do you document your experiences? Could there be a book?

That’s a very nice idea. I could put that on my list of potential things I’d love to do. As far as documenting goes, I’ve got an arts degree, but it’s in Spanish, so it’s irrelevant to any kind of visual art. I’ve also got a science degree, and I document the crap out of everything. Even if I’m colouring eggs pink, I’ll have a whole array of photos showing fifty per cent beetroot and water, twenty-five per cent beetroot and water, twelve hours, six hours, and what shade each egg became. I’ve got photos of all that.

I did the same for the rye-cracker plates and the brooches for Melbourne Design Week. Fifty per cent wheat flour and rye didn’t give me the right colour to match the kraft paper, so then I tried twenty-five per cent and seventy-five per cent. I document the whole process, quite scientifically, and I’m happy to do that because that’s my background. I spent six years studying and never used either degree, but I kind of do, if that makes sense.

When you were doing those degrees, what did you think you might do with them?

It was more than twenty years ago, and I studied for six years to get two degrees. I was studying in Spain as part of my arts degree in 2000, so that’s how long ago it was. For my science degree, I did things like pickling sea blite, a little mangrove succulent. I had a view to cultivating it, producing it, pickling it and selling it to the Japanese market for sushi and things like that. I think I was way before its time. Five or ten years ago, it might have been something that took off. Back then, everyone said, “This is amazing and really great, but it’s so weird.” I think it was too early. That’s what I hoped I might do with the degree.

So you were already thinking about food then as well?

Always. I’ve always thought about food. Even when I lived in Spain as part of my arts degree, we’d have people over every weekend and do potluck dinners. When I lived at Mount Hotham and ran the centre there, we did potlucks. There’s always been food in my life, and there’s always a lot of food in my home. I love it. I find it fun. My partner says my superpower is creating something out of nothing. If someone looks in the cupboard or the fridge and says, “There’s nothing here,” I’ll say, “Hang on a minute.” I love it. It’s so fun.