Food, Memory & Connection: A Culinary Residency by Leila Tang

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Photo credit: Wayne La

About the project

Food, Memory & Connection is a culinary residency by pastry chef Leila Tang from October 2026 to April 2027, developed as part of the Museum of the Home’s ESEA Programme.

Building on the legacy of the Library of Ancestral Knowledge, the residency explores food as a way of sharing memory, heritage, cultural knowledge and connection. It responds to and activates the display of A Terraced House in 2024 in the Museum’s Rooms Through Time gallery, which centres food as a language of love, care and connection.

Drawing on her own experiences as a pastry chef, Leila explores the ways food, memory and migration become intertwined. Through cooking, making, sharing and storytelling, the programme asks what we inherit, how we adapt and what we create anew.

The residency brings together a series of hands on cooking workshops, a Lunar New Year pop up stall and a supper club, creating opportunities for people to explore food as a way of remembering, caring, celebrating and connecting.

About Leila Tang

Leila Tang was born and raised in South East London. She graduated with a First Class BA (Hons) in Social Anthropology and Media from Goldsmiths, University of London before pursuing a career as a professional pastry chef. As a British Vietnamese Chinese woman whose family lived through war, poverty and displacement, she finds inspiration in the flavours and experiences that bring comfort, togetherness and empowerment, often in the situations that we least expect. Her practice explores the ways food, memory and migration become intertwined. Through food, she seeks to celebrate cultural heritage while creating opportunities for people to connect through making, sharing and storytelling.