Every recipe carries a philosophy, every meal a history, every shared table a future. But what happens when war, displacement, and cultural erasure threaten not just lives but the very ideas and traditions embedded in what we eat?

In The Last Sweet Bite, Michael Shaikh, a former human rights investigator who spent nearly two decades in conflict zones, uncovers how war and violence reshape a fundamental aspect of human culture: what and how we eat. Moving between refugee camps, diasporic kitchens, and war-torn cities, Shaikh reveals the quiet heroism of home cooks who fight to preserve ancestral recipes as acts of survival, memory, and defiance. Part memoir, part travelogue, part cookbook, The Last Sweet Bite is also an account of how the history of violence is recorded in kitchens.

Joining Michael at Clio's is Bryant Terry, James Beard Award winning author and editor of The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2025, a collection to remind us that food and travel are as much about remembrance, resistance, and connection as they are about sustenance or movement. In conversation with anthropologist Cari Borja, they will explore how food functions as an archive of ideas, a carrier of culture, and a site of both rupture and repair. This evening is not just about cuisine, it is about the power of food to gather us and bind us and remind us who we are.

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