University Settlement’s City Stories Gala
The Bowery Ballroom
May 2018

Curing conversations, cutting recipes, and carving stories, Culinary Theater has built a new sandwich, The “Loislaida.” It tastes of three distinct Lower East Sides, pressing together Puerto Rican, Chinese, and Jewish tastes into the “perfect” (?) sandwich bite. Following the lead of Chinese van companies that shuttle people between lower Manhattan and Sunset Park, lower Manhattan and Elmhurst, undercutting the subway and going direct, we want to explore a different sort of intersectionality and interconnectivity, the veins of the city whole, that don’t necessarily announce themselves on the maps we’re used to – or on any project by Mr. Bourdain or Mr. Ansari. Hungry ethnographers, working to keep our appetites transparent and their caloric costs on the table, we ask: Where do you see (and taste) yourself in this “slaida”? It is for you. We offer it to start more conversation.