220 - Neha Patel Hampton - How to Use Food and Storytelling to Remember Our Shared Humanity
“My relationship with food is now really firmly set with my desire to drive change.” - Neha Patel Hampton
Whatcha hungry for? It’s a cheeky question with answers that reveal more than our immediate desire for something salty or sour, crunchy or creamy. As Anne discovers in conversation with UK-based chef and social justice change-maker Neha Patel Hampton, food can heal literally and figuratively, bringing us back to ourselves and each other.
It’s no coincidence that this episode feels like a chat over chai in a friend’s kitchen. Neha sprinkles tales of personal reclamation with lessons in world history and views on current events. Her stories remind me that none of us exists in a vacuum; our choices are informed by who and what came before us. For Neha, that’s her parents and the colonialism that forced them to carve out lives far from their home state of Gujarat, India, enduring unbearable pressures to assimilate as “obedient migrants.” But her narrative is also flavored by boxes of rare, fragrant mangoes, the ultimate expression of life’s sweetness.
Cooking and sharing her cultural heritage are essential to Neha’s healing. “I found a way to use food to educate people about our history.” Her supper club events provide the perfect venue for an exchange of ideas, inspirations, and delicious chapatis. “I'm there to share stories about what these dishes mean to me, where they come from, what the ingredients are,” she says, recognizing yet another way food binds us to one other. “If you look at dishes, you can say, like, famous dishes of India only exist because the Portuguese brought ingredients to them. I can sit here and be really negative about the effects of colonization, but we have to also acknowledge that the food we know and love today exists because of that.”
When she’s not cooking, Neha works with three different charities to improve the lives of people like her parents, who have migrated to the UK. “That makes me feel proud of myself,” she says. “It makes me feel proud to be Indian. It’s also helping me to find pride in being British because there has to be a change. I genuinely believe that if we don't recognize the history and where we came from, we can't change the future.”
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Neha Patel Hampton is so many things... With over 20 years of experience in corporate, hospitality and charity settings, she now fights for social justice through her work with organisations who help to improve the lives of those who migrate and fight racial and gender inequality. Topped off with a heartfelt sprinkling of food and yoga as her way of bringing people together.
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