Truffles, tastes and tells for unconscious bias

FTI Consulting’s Women’s Initiative Network and the ACC Women’s Committee co-hosted an evening at the ultra-progressive Tippling Club On 3 October, exploring unconscious bias via the medium of food. With the guidance of the Tippling Club’s head chef, Ryan Clift, guests were surprised and delighted by a variety of unique culinary experiences, proving that what you see is not always what you get.

The evening began with an option to choose between two scented papers, the welcome cocktail being determined by your preferred scent. The two committees jointly introduced the evening’s theme of unconscious bias by reminding us that stereotypes, and the assumptions that often accompany them, are both extremely common and extremely dangerous, and asking for a commitment from attendees to approach the rest of the evening with an open and unbiased mindset.

Guests were treated to a variety of sensory delights throughout the evening, including a deconstructed Tom Yum soup, a lava lamp gazpacho and the “Meteorite”, a mandarin madras chocolate ball, developed together with NASA scientists to replicate in its taste the exact scent of outer space. Certainly not your average after-dinner truffle.