Chef Zen Gabriel
I'm a chef, facilitator, and experience designer.
Started cooking at 4, began in restaurants at 13. I’ve worked in Michelin Starred spots and burger joints. I’ve even spent time working as an audio and video producer!
I create spaces where food becomes a way to connect—to ourselves, to each other, and to something deeper.
Right now I’m working on Cooking in Presence, a class about slowing down and returning to our senses through food, and The Quiet Masterpiece, a seasonal tasting series that’s part ritual, part dinner, part sensory journey.
My creative process is experimental, relational, and devotional. Cooking is one of the ways I pray. I care a lot about creating containers for transformation—for discovering who we are, how we love, and how much we can hold. I’m endlessly curious, and I’m always chasing that moment when something new opens.
I believe in art as a form of love. I believe in experiences that change us. I believe in supporting my friends and showing up fully for what’s real. And I believe in making beautiful things, just because we can.
-Z
What is Mindfully Embodied Dining?
Mindfully embodied dining is the practice of being fully present with food—through the body, the senses, the stories we bring to the table, and an appreciation of the processes involved in the creation of our experience. It’s an invitation to experience eating not just as taste or nourishment, but as a multi-layered moment of awareness.
This practice lives at the intersection of sensation and meaning:
We feel the texture of each bite, notice the breath, track the body’s responses—and at the same time, we bring attention to the conceptual frames we carry: beliefs about food, identity, pleasure, and worth, and work.
Mindfully embodied dining is about how we eat, how we experience, and how we hold the experience. It’s a portal into presence, a somatic and symbolic act of connection—with ourselves, with each other, and with the more-than-human world that feeds us.
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