It all started
around a dinner table.

France · INSEAD

The first Wednesdays.

During my MBA at INSEAD in France, I lived at Château Villecerf near Fontainebleau. Every Wednesday, my housemates and I cooked dinner and invited classmates over. Often 20–25 people came. The evenings could last three or four hours.

We came from different countries and backgrounds. Sharing food, wine and conversation gave us time to get to know one another. Those dinners showed me how a meal could make room for meaningful conversations.

New York · 2017

A familiar ritual, a new city.

Years later, I was based in Manhattan and traveling frequently for work. My wife was working through the process of moving to the United States.

From my apartment on the 30th floor at 56th Street and Broadway, I could watch the sun set over the Hudson River. I began hosting Wednesday dinners again: setting the table, preparing food and inviting friends over.

At first I cooked dishes I knew, particularly salmon and chicken. Eventually, I wanted more variety. I decided to prepare a dish from a different country each week.

A different country each week.

I looked for a country with an important national holiday or cultural celebration. Then I researched a dish, read recipes, watched demonstrations, learned about its history, sourced the ingredients and cooked.

The food gave us something new to discuss over dinner. Among the dishes I cooked were Bosnian pasulj, Lancashire hotpot, Ghanaian jollof rice and Indonesian nasi goreng.

I started an Instagram presence, registered the domain and imagined a coffee-table book. In 2018, I kept a spreadsheet of countries, dishes, recipes and my own changes. The project was eventually paused.

The blue dot behind it all.

The name was inspired by Voyager 1’s 1990 Pale Blue Dot photograph. A tiny point in space contains all these people, cultures and culinary traditions. Food became my way of exploring some of that diversity.

On February 14, 1990, Voyager 1 photographed Earth from far beyond its orbit. Seen from that distance, our planet becomes a small point of light. Food gives that tiny point its detail again: ingredients, households, techniques and the people who share them. Our blue dot is an original graphic interpretation, not a reproduction of the NASA photograph.

This website is the revival of that idea. The new recipe collection begins with researched dishes. The original 2018 workbook, once available, will be preserved separately so its dates, cooking notes and modifications remain traceable.

There is still much to learn, and plenty of room at the table.