Banquet in a Bowl

This week’s blog is about a very special evening that happened in the workshop recently. Together with friends we transformed the space into a place to sit and eat food together and talk craft. It celebrated both the craft of cooking and the craft of making, but mainly we just had good food and fun times. Firstly, I’ll talk a little about the road that led up to this event and how it came about (or nearly didn’t), plus what the future holds.

In 2023 I completed a commission for The Pony pub making wooden bowls and plates for them from a tree in their garden, and the owner and chef Josh Eggleton mentioned a desire to bring crafty activities such as my woodwork to the garden of the restaurant. Whilst talking about this it became clear that a chef is also a craftsman in that they take a raw, natural material, and transform it into something desirable, in this case delicious food.

In July 2024 I started talking to Rachel (Greenhouse Plant-based Dining) about doing a collaborative event in the workshop we would call Banquet in a Bowl. The lofty aim of it was to encourage attendees to honour the role craft takes in our everyday lives. Ticket prices were to include not just the food you ate (specially chosen to reflect current ingredients and food best suited to serving in a wooden bowl), but also the bowl you ate from (made by me). As well as Rachel talking about the recipes before each course, I would also demonstrate turning a bowl between courses so everyone could see and understand what that process entailed. Both of us were very excited by it, but we left it a little late for 2024 bookings and we didn’t have the numbers to run it. We tried again in 2025, advertising much earlier, and again take up was slow, so it was, to both our regrets, cancelled once more. In hindsight this was probably due to the lack of advertisement rather than it being a bad idea per se. The high price also reduced the number of people who could afford it.

Eventually I ran the 2025 date on my own, inviting friends (including some other crafters), and I cooked a large pot of chilli, with some home-made cake for dessert. It was a lovely evening as you can see from all the pictures, and re-enforced my feeling that these events are worth trying to organise and persisting with them.

For me, as someone trying to sell wooden bowls, one of the biggest obstacles I come across is people knowing how they may use them. Most of them have never eaten from a wooden bowl, and this event provides an opportunity for people to try. Perhaps like me (and I’m sure may of the readers of this blog) they’ll decide it is worth the extra cost and invest in some. For those that haven’t eaten from wooden bowls, the noises and tactility are a totally different experience to ceramic (especially if you use a wooden eating spoon), and they are much better at keeping food warm, plus they don’t tend to break as easily if(when?) you drop them.

So, regarding the future, I plan to run this event again in 2026. I have accepted that people are prepared to pay for the three-course meal, but not for the bowl. There will however, be the option to buy your own bowl (and potentially even spoon) at the end of the evening.

Personally I find it a little strange, that the food and bowl are effectively the same price, despite one lasting for a day and the other a lifetime (if looked after correctly). Maybe my bowls should be even more expensive, but they are already so much more than other available materials and methods of manufacture. I suppose people don’t buy because everyone has a bowl(s) already, but maybe with more events like these, perhaps in time these will become wooden bowls.

Thanks for reading, I’d love to hear your thoughts or suggestions if you have any, so please comment below!

(All photos by Sarah Dowling Art)