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Eating as Art, Eating as Healing: in Conversation with Food Designer Leyu Li 



Writing by Sarah Kim
Photos by Ruben Nelson

May 2025
Stepping foot inside tHEIR gallery at 56 Dawes Road was like entering a conceptual landscape—food became an extension of the natural world. Food designer Leyu Li organized the opening night of Food as Root, Stone, and Mountain: The Manifesto of Roots, presenting an edible tablescape accompanied by a display of artworks, all to challenge how we interact with food.

The spread in its entirety was visible from outside a glass window, creating a performance of food, curiosity, and movement. Pedestrians would stop to observe the people grazing the stations inside, pulled in by the unexpected fusion of food and art. Some entered cautiously, others excitedly, each one becoming a piece of the living installation as they took a stride inside.

I sat down with Leyu to learn about her approach to food design, her inspirations, and what it means to create an edible experience for her.




LEYU LI: “I’m a food designer, food creative director, and emerging restaurateur based in London, using food as a medium to tell stories, create experiences, and design interactions. Rooted in the concept of “Food as Medicine,” I bring my explorations beyond the gallery. Currently I’m developing a restaurant project that engages cross-cultural conversations around health and nourishment through immersive dining and accessible, nourishing flavors.

After studying at Central Saint Martins, I completed my BA and MA at Goldsmiths, University of London. My work often explores hybrid food, cross-cultural communication, and social media—it aims to investigate the connections between cultures, ecologies, technologies, and societies while speculating on future food and alternative food futures. Over time I’ve developed my interest in food as a storytelling material—something deeply sensory and poetic.”


Since meeting Leyu for the first time she has consistently emphasized the idea of “food as flux,” the notion central to her practice. Leyu has a sharp understanding of the relationship between food and self. To her, this relationship is a fluid continuum that develops as one goes through life experiences. The widely-known term “comfort food” exists due to the fact that people find release in eating food reminiscent of home or soothing presences. 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, “stress eating” expresses how some cope in response to frustrations. Leyu’s inquisitive mind takes this investigation a step further—she questions the potential power of food as a vessel. “For me, it came naturally,” she explains.




LL: “I've always explored and researched food through a critical and reflective lens. What fascinates me most is food is never just food—it’s a vessel of power.

Food raises questions like, “What is allowed to be eaten? Who decides that? How do we eat it? When do we eat it?” These questions are fundamentally tied to social structures and power dynamics.

Eating is the most personal, yet political act. It is a pure expression of choice. Yet that choice is often shaped by culture, history, class, and politics. Even more compelling is that food does not merely pass through us—it becomes us. Even when some of it exits the body through the digestion process, a part of it transforms into our energy, cells, and tissue.

That’s what makes food so irreversible. It’s not only symbolic—it’s physically real. What a powerful medium. It’s hard to say no to as a designer!”


Food design is a relatively undefined field, which means it leaves room for a lot of experimentation. While London is undoubtedly one of the leading cities in this emergent field, it still proved to be a challenge for Leyu.


LL: One of the biggest challenges was that food design is still a niche field, especially outside of specific academic or artistic contexts. Many people don’t know what a food designer does, and it can be hard to explain without sounding abstract.




A seemingly ‘hybrid’ discipline between the culinary and fine arts, food design is certainly hard to define. Lying at the intersection of food and art, it concerns the presentation of food as an orator of stories and elicits emotions in less conventional food settings (i.e. an art gallery). 

This description may still sound vague to a food-design newcomer; Leyu elaborated further on her strategy to promote food design as a discipline and how she centered herself firmly in the field.


LL: “Instead of waiting for the world to define the field for me, I built up my own reputation first through supper clubs, edible installations, social media storytelling, and visual branding. This gave me the credibility and visibility to introduce food design to new audiences in a more personal, relatable way. When people connect with me, they naturally become curious about my work, opening the door for deeper conversations about what food design really means.

I chose to use myself as a medium. I became the first example of what food design can look like in everyday life. I positioned myself as a mini influencer, using my lifestyle, appearance, and voice to build a recognizable persona that embodies the values of my work: healing, beauty, interaction, storytelling, and emotion through food.

This approach has been efficient for younger audiences and cross-cultural communication, offering a personal and relatable entry point into food design. Rather than explaining the field through theory or history, I embody it through lived experience. Making it more accessible, emotional, and inspiring.“




Each plinth in The Manifesto of Roots featured curated food inspired by one of three themes. Earthy flavors took center stage at the “root” station—sliced, fermented, and pickled root vegetables, smoked carrot purée, lotus root crisps, and braised lotus roots arranged like artifacts of the underground. 

The textures shifted at the “stone” station; dense, grounded elements like rice flour, glutinous rice flour, sesame, matcha powder, fermented oats, and coconut milk invoked the patience of time. Their solidity echoing the slow transformations of geology. And lastly at the “mountain” station, the lightness of air and altitude materialized in crushed peanuts, nuts, sugar, glutinous rice, jasmine tea pudding, and fermented rice, inviting guests to experience food as something ephemeral.

The ethereal food sculptures brought the gallery attendees into a state of shared marvel. All the while, Leyu and her teammate, Norine, weaved seamlessly through the crowd, giving final touches to the installation. 

Leyu states her work as a food designer actually exists in two intertwined layers.


LL: On the one hand, I work as a creative food designer, crafting experimental and interactive food experiences for brands, exhibitions, and events. This includes edible installations, immersive food landscapes, and the development of conceptual food narratives. In these moments, I use food as a storytelling material, a sensory language to design interactions.

On the other hand, I also find myself working as a food practitioner in more traditional, hospitality-centered roles. This means I often step into the shoes of someone running a food business. I need to think about suppliers, logistics, distribution channels, margins, and many other non-creative, yet essential, aspects of bringing food ideas to life.

That’s all to say, my practice sits at the intersection of art and commerce, storytelling and existing systems. Balancing both sides allows me to stay grounded while dreaming big. And that duality is exactly what keeps my work alive and evolving.




Indeed, this work carefully balances artistic vision and untantalizing logistics. While the event captured the poetic nature of a traditional art installation—each station representing a different element—it was also a carefully orchestrated hospitality experience. The flow of guests, the timing of food replenishment, and the intentional design of each bite to be both visually striking and delicious: it all showcased Leyu’s ability to merge storytelling with functionality. 

Once granted permission to indulge, guests wasted no time at all. They sniffed, touched, and tasted the edible sculptures, bringing Leyu’s vision into full sensory bloom. People immediately began engaging in conversation about the taste, discussing the flavors in each bite, and reveling together in wonder.




Why is this so exciting? To respond from my art history point of view, touch is a hierarchical concept in art. We learn from a young age that we must act a certain way in galleries and museums. Those who can touch an artwork are only the art handlers, conservators, and perhaps the artist themselves. The act of touch is highly regulated in the world of fine arts.

In The Manifesto of Roots, however, people get to throw this social rule right out the window. Inside tHEIR gallery, people were free to touch, hold, and bite into the sculptures—chewing, swallowing, and absorbing the art itself.

Emotion can be found at the core of both art and food, and this link is the bedrock of food design. It’s a field that invites us to indulge using all of our senses, not only our eyes. Art can literally nourish us.

Nourishing and healing are priorities for Leyu in her career. She explored these themes in depth in a previous event of hers, Food as Medicine.


LL: One of the projects closest to my heart is the F.A.M. (Food As Medicine) Supper Club. It’s more than a dining event. It’s a space for healing, storytelling, and connection through food. Each supper club explores a theme, often rooted in Chinese food therapy, but reimagined in a contemporary way. One event was titled “Eat Loads of Apples This Xmas,” inspired by the Chinese tradition of gifting apples on Christmas Eve as a wish for peace. Apples were incorporated throughout both the menu and rituals for the evening.

F.A.M. is about creating a sensory and trustworthy landscape where people feel seen and connected, it’s not just about food. It reminds me why I do what I do.




By embracing the ideas of “food as flux” and “food as medicine,” Leyu strives to infuse her food design with emotion and the power to heal her audience. Her work revolves around creating moments of connection, between past and present, body and environment, and self and others. Whether she is arranging a supper club that channels the principles of traditional Chinese medicine or curating a grazing station that mirrors the textures of a landscape, her food designs remind us that eating is an emotional act that allows us to let out the bad and be nourished with the good.

Perhaps this is the quiet power of her work: it makes us more present.


LL: For the future, I’m developing a pop-up restaurant project that brings together everything I’ve been exploring: food as narrative, healing through dining, and cross-cultural expression. The food will be nourishing and delicious, designed to care for the body while sparking emotional and cultural connections. It’s about creating a moment of pause in a busy life.


Leyu Li transforms food into a powerful medium. Through edible landscapes and communal spaces of nourishing, her food design shows us food is a vital language.



You can keep up with Leyu’s upcoming projects and events on her Instagram @leyu.li. Thank you Leyu for sharing your beautiful project and story with us!



Contributors Sarah Kim is a London-based art historian and curator specialising in contemporary art and its interdisciplinary potential in the formal and aesthetic dimensions.

Ruben Nelson, a London-based photographer, captures extraordinary moments across the UK, from the weird and wild streets to the high-end events of the West End.