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Forbes
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
How The Radiant Table Is Fusing Visual Storytelling With High-End Cuisine
The Radiant Table San Francisco's newest dining series, The Radiant Table, is introducing a more elevated take on immersive dining—one that centers chefs and cuisine rather than spectacle. The multi-course dinner series debuted last month and integrates projection mapping technology and top culinary talent into a cohesive, rotating format. Each evening features a new chef, menu, and an accompanying visual narrative, creating an experience focused on storytelling through food. The main goal? To support the chefs and giving them a unique, one-of-a-kind stage where their food stays front and center. While the visuals, music, and design are certainly show-stopping, it's designed to enhance the dining experience, not compete with it. Each dinner experience is created with the chef, inspired by the stories and ideas behind their menu. Each night's chef personally introduces each course, offering context and connection. The projections serve to complement that narrative. At its core, it's about shared storytelling—led by the food, with everything else there to bring it to life. Created by SE Productions—the team behind large-scale culinary experiences like Field to Table and Sumo + Sushi—The Radiant Table builds on a foundation of innovation. The Radiant Table 'At SE Productions, we've always been focused on creating experiences that are entirely new, whether that's building a pop-up restaurant on the 50-yard line of a stadium for Field To Table or flying sumo wrestlers in from Japan for the ultimate 'edu-tainment' experience at Sumo + Sushi,' says SE Productions President, Sam Minkoff. 'Innovation is one of our core values.' This latest concept aims to reframe the idea of immersive dining by emphasizing culinary talent. 'Cassie, my wife and creative partner, and I had experienced other projection-mapped dinners like Le Petit Chef in our travels. While we admired the theatricality of those concepts, we felt there was an opportunity to flip the script, putting the chef at the center rather than the animation,' Minkoff explains. 'Our background in technical production gave us the tools to create immersive visuals that don't just entertain but actually elevate the culinary experience.' Guests are seated at communal eight-person tables, where dishes are served alongside coordinated animations that reflect the meal's theme. One night might feature coastal ingredients paired with ocean-inspired visuals, while another draws on forest flavors and earthy tones. 'Radiant Table was born out of a desire to give chefs a creative playground and to offer guests a sensory-rich environment where art, storytelling, and food work in tandem,' says Minkoff. The Radiant Table The Radiant Table launched on May 16, 2025, and has since featured a diverse and exceptionally talented lineup of Bay Area chefs. Participants have included chef Alex Hong of the one Michelin-starred Sorrel, known for his refined take on seasonal California cuisine, and James Beard semi-finalist chef Azalina Eusope, a fifth-generation street food vendor turned fine dining chef recognized for bringing Malaysian flavors into the spotlight in San Francisco with Azalina's. From Top Chef Season 18 alum and Sobre Mesa chef Nelson German, whose Dominican-meets-Afro-Caribbean flavors are bold and inventive, to chef Heena Patel of Besharam, one of the few chefs in the U.S. highlighting the vibrant vegetarian traditions of Gujarati cuisine, the range of talent and cultural depth is unmatched. Each chef brings a distinct perspective, enriching the series with personal storytelling and regionally inspired dishes that push the boundaries of what immersive dining can be. While immersive hospitality concepts have become more common, The Radiant Table's focus on chef-driven menus and evolving programming sets it apart. With new chef lineups and themes introduced regularly, the series offers a more curated, thoughtful alternative to traditional pop-ups—and a new model for experiential dining in the Bay Area. After the final weekend of the The Radiant Table sold out, they've decided to host one last encore dinner. The series last event will take place June 27th with 3rd Cousin chef, Greg Lutes. For more information, click here. We chatted with SE Productions President Sam Minkoff on what goes in to producing The Radiant Table, how they choose their featured chefs and more. Here's what he had to say: We believe a city's culinary landscape is central to its cultural identity. Radiant Table is our way of building a stage where we can spotlight the chefs shaping that identity, those already recognized with accolades like Michelin stars or James Beard nods, and those who we believe are destined for that kind of recognition. The Radiant Table Our Food & Beverage Manager, Alycia, does an incredible job researching and building relationships with chefs in each city. We look for talent that's not just accomplished, but also curious, chefs who are eager to collaborate and explore a new medium of creative expression. The response from the chefs who've participated so far has been incredibly positive. While we're rooted in local talent, we do plan to bring in occasional visiting chefs to add another layer to the experience. Radiant Table is more supper club than white-tablecloth dining. We're intentionally nudging people out of their comfort zones, whether that's through the visual environment, unfamiliar dishes, or simply the act of sitting with strangers. We've found that guests who seek out unique culinary experiences tend to share common passions: food, community, creativity, and local culture. Placing them at shared eight-top tables fosters real connection. One of our favorite moments during our debut in San Francisco was seeing guests exchange numbers and hug each other at the end of the night. That kind of community-building is exactly what we hope for. There's also a creative reason for the format: from a production standpoint, a 9-by-4-foot table gives our projection artists a larger canvas to work with. It allows the visuals to breathe and truly complement each dish, and helps us maximize the capabilities of our tech. This project was born, in part, from the efforts of grassroots community leaders in San Francisco working to revitalize its downtown core. One Market Plaza, just a block from the Ferry Building, offered an amazing opportunity to bring life back into a former co-working space in a way that's creative and unexpected. Transforming unconventional spaces is something we've leaned into across many of our projects. With Sumo + Sushi, we've taken airplane hangars, film studios, and armories and turned them into cultural theaters. The Radiant Table With Field to Table, we've built stunning 10,000 square foot dining rooms on the 50 yard lines of professional sports fields. Reinventing nontraditional venues has become a bit of a specialty, and it's something we take a lot of pride in. Next up is Bellevue, Washington—a neighboring city to our hometown of Seattle and a place that's quickly emerging as a culinary destination in the Pacific Northwest. We're excited to host Radiant Table in a former Ruth's Chris Steakhouse that had been a fixture in Bellevue for nearly 20 years. It's a perfect example of reimagining what a space can be. After Bellevue, we plan to bring this to other cities with fantastic culinary landscapes, including New York and Chicago. Our ethos is simple: food comes first. Everything else is designed to support that. From the start, we made it a priority to be of service to the chefs, to create a platform where their food could shine and not get lost in the theatrics. The visuals, music, and design are all there to deepen the guest's experience of the dish, not distract from it. Each visual environment is built in collaboration with the chef, drawing on the themes, stories, and personal inspiration behind their menu. The chefs introduce each course themselves, giving guests a deeper understanding of what's on the plate. The projection mapping acts as a companion to that storytelling. Ultimately, we're creating a shared space for storytelling, where food leads the conversation and everything else is there to help it resonate.
CBS News
05-06-2025
- Business
- CBS News
The Radiant Table arrives in San Francisco for immersive dinner experience
At One Market Plaza, just across from the Ferry Building, The Radiant Table just opened for a six-week run, offering a new kind of dining experience. "When a guest comes in, they're sort of transported into this alternate realm where they're meeting their favorite chefs, but they're also experiencing their food in a way that they've never been able to do before," said Minkoff. Sam Minkoff is founder of SE Productions. He and his wife went to work quickly, building tables, setting up projectors, and transforming a co-working space cafe on the first floor, in just one week, into a colorful, immersive culinary experience. "The visuals on the table are meant to really complement the chef's meal, and the chefs design their meals around the visuals and vice versa. So, there's a major storytelling component there that allows those guests to kind of dive even deeper into the story of why that dish was created by that particular chef," said Minkoff. Michael Seiler, the founder of Collective Impact, a strategy firm, isn't leasing prime commercial real estate to just any business. He's looking for visionaries, artists, and entrepreneurs who can offer a different kind of product. "In downtown, you still see a lot of empty retail and so if you can empower those arts, culture and community leaders to activate the empty retail space, you immediately give them what they need to flourish, to grow, to get more people together, to grow opportunities for community and commerce, and that's what building owners want," said Seiler. In exchange for prime retail space that would normally cost tens of thousands a month, Minkoff and his team are showing how empty spaces can be used to attract permanent tenants. Once treasured pieces of downtown property worth hundreds of millions have sold for a fraction of what they were worth pre pandemic. "What they want is community in their space and vibrancy. They want their buildings to be alive. They want people to be enjoying it. They want people to be purchasing and buying. They want people to enjoy being back in person," said Seiler. It's experiences like this, art galleries with wine and clay making classes, and expos during SF Climate Week for example, that Seiler sees as a way to create a hub for community and commerce. "The narrative isn't out yet that San Francisco is back. It's vibrant. There are communities churning out their next version of what San Francisco will be," said Seiler. It's bringing people to the table, connecting them with the community, and hoping others will want to come back to a thriving downtown. Each dinner at The Radiant Table features a new chef including some Michelin Star winners. After its debut in San Francisco ends in June, the Radiant Table will head to Bellevue Washington next.
