The Language of Food: Arepas and Other Hand Pies (with Cooking Demo!)

Wednesday, May 26, 2021 | 6:30 p.m.

In honor of International Cultural Awareness Month, Planet Word is teaming up with Immigrant Food to explore the language and culture around that delicious staple, the hand pie. Planet Word’s Rebecca Roberts and Immigrant Food’s Téa Ivanovic take you on a virtual global tour of handheld dough wrapped around something wonderfully savory, whether you call them samosas, piroshkis, pupusas, pastys, empanadas, or Jamaican meat pies. And when you’re good and hungry, join us for a live virtual cooking class on how to make traditional Venezuelan arepas with Immigrant Food’s Head of Kitchen, Mile Montezuma.

Immigrant Food is a restaurant with a cause: to bring you world flavors with a mission. Through a fusion menu created by Chef Enrique Limardo, the cause-casual restaurant celebrates the centuries of gastronomic contributions by immigrants from around the world. But they don’t stop there. Immigrant Food is also an advocacy platform that partners with five local immigrant-service NGOs to connect its customers with the immigrant community, and educate them on the complexities of immigration. Through its monthly micro-digital publication, The Think Table, Immigrant Food ‘slices and dices’ the immigration issue into ‘manageable bites’ (a lot of food metaphors!) to cut through the noise and misinformation. Advocating and educating through food — call it gastroadvocacy.