
A Matter of Taste Seattle: Participant Spotlight on Joanna Lepore Dwyer & Jennifer Diamond
A Matter of Taste co-founders Joanna Lepore Dwyer and Jennifer Diamond have a combined 40+ years experience in team facilitation, change leadership, culinary innovation, food science, and workshop design. They specialize in tasting workshops, classes, and make-at-home kits along with offering food and flavor education, pairing guides, recipes, cooking demos, and more!
Q: Hi Joanna and Jennifer! Tell us about your business focus.
A: We are a women-owned business offering immersive team-based culinary experiences that build connections over deep dives into the cultural and historical uses of foods and flavors. Our conversations include an introduction into flavor language with detailed pairing guides; plus recipes, cooking demonstrations, and resources – or interviews – for further learning.
We believe the experience of tasting brings people together. In everything we do at A Matter of Taste Seattle, we try to highlight local makers and products that have grown out of the grassroots farming and culinary scene.
Q: What’s a project you’re working on, and how can your Seattle Restored participation help you with it?
A: We’re launching a series of intimate tasting events with local food and beverage makers in our beautiful Seattle Restored pop-up space, the historic Florence Theater in Pioneer Square (at the base of the Smith Tower). We’re so excited to introduce these amazing people, products, and flavors to a new audience, helping to elevate small producers and create an environment of shared learning and inspiration.
Long term we can see ourselves taking this concept one step further with a shared commissary kitchen / workshop space to further remove barriers for our local food scene and provide a collaborative environment to help our favorite products and flavors continue to thrive.
Q: What’s the most rewarding part of your business pursuits?
A: The moment of a personal taste discovery is so amazing to witness, whether between friends over dinner or among strangers trying something new at a Farmer’s Market. When we create these opportunities in our experiences, we unlock a level of connection that can spark new conversations, relationships, and collaborations.
Q: What are you looking forward to this year?
A: We’ve gained a lot of momentum in the last year and are looking forward to forging lasting relationships with our peers and audience and creating meaningful avenues for ours and other small brands and businesses to grow and collaborate.
Q: What brings you most alive about working or living in Seattle?
A: Seattle is a melting pot of cultures, flavors, and perspectives. We’ve built our brand and try to live our lives based on the practice of staying open to new foods, experiences, history, and ideas.
Q: If you could give any one piece of advice to locals, what would it be?
A: The unexpected is a gift, an opportunity to check and course correct or set sail for something entirely new! Give yourself the room to see the potential, it’s all here in Seattle.
Q: What’s your favorite Seattle Restored pop-up or art installation and why?
A: Besides our own, we love the Momma Lips Draws art installation on 5th Avenue downtown.
Q: What’s your favorite Seattle memory?
A: The many, many times the city waterfront reveals herself on ferry approach from Bainbridge or Bremerton, from the Stadiums to the Needle to Magnolia.
Q: Where would you spend a lazy Sunday afternoon in Seattle?
A: After a morning at the Ballard Farmers Market, at home cooking up the week’s latest discoveries.
VISIT A MATTER OF TASTE SEATTLE
Address:
512 2nd Ave
Seattle, WA 98104
Open hours: Wed-Fri, 10am-5pm
Dates: December 7, 2023 – March 1, 2024