Julia’s World Kitchen
From a Bournemouth supper club to a weekly delivery service, Julia Shapp's World Kitchen celebrates the traditional cuisines and stories of migrant women, fostering community and bridging cultural divides through the universal language of food.
At heart, Julia’s World Kitchen seeks to put the traditional cooking of migrant women into the limelight.
Beginning in February, what was first a supper club has now grown into a weekly delivery service, bringing home-cooked world cuisine to Bournemouth.
Aware of the hardships that come with moving to a new country, Julia Shapp founded her world kitchen with the intent of building community with those who had left theirs behind.
The project not only celebrates the women's traditional family recipes, but their stories too.
It came to be through volunteer work at International Care Network, a charity helping to rebuild the lives of asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants.
Part of the charity is helping women find work in the UK. Every few weeks, members would bring a native dish for a shared banquet. "By the third banquet, I was like, this is ridiculously delicious, how did you make that?" Julia explains. "Hence, the beginning of talking all things food; making comparisons and sharing pictures of spices we'd never heard of. It just came together."
The supper club was born from wanting to share these delicious authentic dishes with Julia's greater community. "These dishes should be celebrated and shared," says Julia, "What better way to break down barriers than through the breaking of bread with one another and sharing our stories."
Apart from cooking delicious food, benefits of the kitchen are creating a space for work experience, making new friends, building community, and practising English, but ultimately, it has become a sanctuary.
“By creating this space and letting it unfold, the women have been able to share their stories and journeys. Maybe not the first time in the kitchen, but definitely by the second time,” Julia reveals. “There’s been tears and crying, hugs, laughter, all the things that being in this space allows, it feels safe.”
Though born in Bournemouth, the kitchen has its roots worldwide, with women involved from Eastern Europe, Latin America, South Asia, the Middle East and North America.
Naturally, the diversity of cultures creates differences within the kitchen, yet for this team, these differences are cause to celebrate - and what better way to do so than through food?
So far, a multitude of chefs from the all-woman team have prepared 20 different regional dishes, delivering them across Bournemouth as a part of the weekly delivery service.
The food is cooked with quality ingredients, slowly and with love. Hence, there's a limit to how many people the kitchen can serve each week. Only signed-up customers can choose from a weekly changing menu, get their fresh homemade food delivered the day it's cooked, heat and eat, then repeat.
All whilst remaining as local as possible when sourcing ingredients. "When it comes to niche vegetables and spices, we scour the smaller speciality shops and green grocers. We always call on the array of local butchers for more unusual types and cuts of meat," shares Julia.
For Julia, the kitchen allows her to challenge the negative rhetoric and narrative about migration, celebrating diversity rather than letting it create division.
Around the world, 110 million people are currently displaced from their home countries, each facing the struggle of assimilation in an unknown place.
“We don’t talk about migration; we don’t talk about our journeys and our stories,” she declares. “I think you’ll find that so many people have a migration story, if not first generation, then second or third, and they’re all incredibly inspiring.”
Julia and the chefs were kind enough to invite the Pier team to try the week's meals as they were cooked for delivery. As we sat and talked, Kaur prepared for us a North Indian starter and main, lauki gourd kofta and chicken makhani.
Scents of turmeric, cumin and spices unknown to our noses flowed throughout the room and our conversation, a picture of Julia’s World Kitchen in action.
Despite Kaur’s willingness to lower the spice within the two dishes, Julia’s incitement to cook as you would at home meant we enjoyed both at their best and most authentic.
Once we’d finished the kofta and makhani, Mariana prepared a traditional Ukrainian nalysnyky. A sweet pancake filled with homemade cheese curd, topped with homemade sour cherry compote and sour cream. Fried in butter, the sweet and sour fusion was bliss for us all.
The two told us of their stories and journey to the UK in more the ways than one, through conversation and through the food that - to them - means home.
For Karamjeet Kaur, her two daughters and husband are those who most commonly delight in her traditional North Indian cooking. Originating from Haryana, Kaur has been in the UK for just over a year and was the second member of Julia’s World Kitchen. Having learnt from her own mother, Kaur has aspirations for her own cooking business.
“I have big dreams, one day I strive to be my own chef,” Kaur says. “I’d love a restaurant or a curry van that I can take to festivals and Sunday markets.”
Mariana Sosnovska originates from Ternopil in Ukraine. In 2022, her family were displaced by the conflict that afflicted her home. She moved to the UK that spring. As we spoke, Mariana told us she looks to cook her best food for the best people. “I have always cooked for those that I love, with love,” she explained. This was felt not just through her traditional food, but her kind nature, toasting us ‘na zdorovya’ before we ate, Ukrainian for ‘to your health’. juliasworldkitchen.com
