With EDIT: Stories, SILCOHAUS sits with makers who bring intention to everything they put in front of people. Nat and Ayush run Feast Studio, a food and design practice built from a shared obsession with how a meal looks, tastes, and feels. This is a conversation about what goes into the table before anyone sits down.
Ayush prepping © SILCOHAUS
One pumpkin, ten ways
Nat and Ayush go to the farmers' market and buy one thing. A pumpkin. A whole pumpkin, because it was two dollars a kilo and they could not walk past it. They bring it home and sit down together. He talks through what the ingredient can do. She starts sketching. Not recipes exactly, but flavour combinations, plating ideas, colour notes. By the end of the afternoon, there are ten dishes on paper, none of them written as a list. They are drawn.
Menu sketches by Nat © SILCOHAUS
This is how Feast Studio begins every meal. Not from a menu, but from a single ingredient and the time spent pulling it apart.
"We don't follow recipes. We just look for inspiration. What ingredients they use, the photos, how they were plated. And then we sketch it out. "
- Ayush, Chef & Founder of Feast Studio
Nat, Feast Studio © SILCOHAUS
Nat is a designer by trade. She runs her own studio and brings that thinking to every plate that leaves the kitchen. Ayush is a chef who came to cooking at 24, after finishing a master's in accounting and deciding it was not for him. He had never been allowed in the kitchen growing up in Nepal. His mother saw no reason for a boy to be there. Now the kitchen is the only place he wants to be.
Nat and Ayush, Feast Studio © SILCOHAUS
They have been together for ten years, married for one. From the very first conversation, 90% of what they talk about is food. Feast Studio is what happens when that conversation becomes a practice.
"It's a studio that makes food. Not just a kitchen. Everything is designed, everything is bespoke, everything is made for that specific audience."
- Nat, Sous chef, Designer & Founder of Feast Studio
Nat serving, Noka on the table © SILCOHAUS
Eat with your eyes
Nat thinks about colour the way she thinks about layout. When she plans a meal, the palette is part of the structure. It is always a balance. If the protein is brown, there must be something pink on the side. Two green dishes cannot sit on the same table. There is always a counterpoint somewhere, always something that pulls the eye across the spread.
"It's always like yin and yang. Different colours mean different tastes. If something is brown, we need pink pickles on the side. There's always a pop of colour somewhere."
- Nat, Sous chef, Designer & Founder of Feast Studio
Colour on the plate © SILCOHAUS
This is not garnish or decoration. It is how the menu gets built. The visual balance sometimes determines what stays and what gets cut. Ayush will suggest two vegetables that taste great together and Nat will reject them because they are both green.
"You eat with your eyes as well. Colourwise, as a feast, it has to look brilliant."
- Nat, Sous chef, Designer & Founder of Feast Studio
Sometimes a dish is born entirely from a visual idea. They made a salad of watermelon and tomato, cut into identical balls, marinated in each other's juice. When you eat it, you do not know which one is in your mouth. The flavour is a surprise. The colour is the invitation.
One of the courses © SILCOHAUS
"Sometimes visual comes first before the taste. I just had a vision. I wanted to put these two things together."
- Nat, Sous chef, Designer & Founder of Feast Studio
They describe their style as "culturally chaotic." Thai and Nepalese flavours meet European technique and Australian produce. Comfort food that challenges just enough to keep people curious. Nothing predictable, nothing repeated. A regular once told them: the day you put kingfish sashimi on the menu, I will not come. That is how they knew they were on the right track.
The table before service © SILCOHAUS
The table no one wants to leave
A Feast Studio supper club is not a networking dinner. There is no theme night, no icebreaker, no pressure to talk. It is food, a table, and the belief that if the meal is good enough, the rest takes care of itself.
"Come and eat. That's it. Socialising is secondary. We're not forcing it. And then after two wines, everybody opens up.
- Nat & Ayush, Founders of Feast Studio
Nat at the table © SILCOHAUS
Nat quietly designs the seating. She considers who is coming, the dynamics, who might enjoy sitting next to whom. Regulars who have met before are placed apart so they meet someone new. The smoker goes near the door. The group of four who always brings wine gets room to spread out. About 30% of their guests are repeat visitors. At every event, at least one or two people come completely alone. They are the ones Nat respects the most.
"Everyone who buys a ticket comes with intent. They planned their schedule, they booked. That's why it's always so positive."
- Nat, Sous chef, Designer & Founder of Feast Studio
The early events were overplanned. Nat wanted themes, storytelling arcs, a curated narrative for each dinner. Over time they realised the food itself was the story. Now they come up with the dishes first, and whatever thread connects them becomes the theme in retrospect. The audience does not need to be guided. They just need to be comfortable, fed well, and left alone to discover the rest at their own pace.
"At the beginning we tried to have a theme every time. But we found we didn't need one. The food tells its own story."
- Nat, Sous chef, Designer & Founder of Feast Studio
The feast, mid-service © SILCOHAUS
The light that changed the table
Before Noka, lighting was the one thing Feast Studio could not solve. The venue they use most often has fluorescent overheads that make everything look flat. Cheap table lamps were too dim to be useful. The plating station never had enough light to check for specks on the plate. Every photo needed colour correction afterward.
Then Noka came onto the table, and something shifted that Nat had not expected.
Dinner under Noka, chilli oil on the side © SILCOHAUS
"This is the first time I see a well-lit environment that isn't bright. It's just the correct amount of light. The correct colour. Not too yellow, not too cool."
- Ayush, Chef & Founder of Feast Studio
A guest changing the colour © SILCOHAUS
Guests noticed immediately. For the first time, people interacted with the centrepiece. They touched it. They changed the colours. In seven events, no one had ever paid attention to the table decorations. This time, they could not leave it alone.
"No one's ever touched the lamps before. But this time, people were actually interacting."
- Ayush, Chef & Founder of Feast Studio
Ayush plating under Noka © SILCOHAUS
Ayush took to the rotation immediately. At the plating station, he could angle the light down to check a plate before it went out, then turn it back toward the table for service. For a chef who never had enough light to spot the details, it was the kind of function that just made sense. The stainless steel surface of Noka matched the chrome plates they had been collecting for months. For this event, they left the vintage plates at home entirely. Everything was steel.
"It goes with our brand. We use lots of steel and chrome. It just happened so seamlessly that we didn't even use the vintage plates this time.
- Ayush, Chef & Founder of Feast Studio
Steel plates and Noka, everything matched © SILCOHAUS
Even the content shifted. Photos taken by different guests, on different phones, from different angles, all came back looking consistent. For the first time, Nat did not have to colour-correct a thing.
Service under Noka light © SILCOHAUS
Where this goes
Nat and Ayush are moving to Bangkok early next year. Feast Studio is going with them.
"We're going to use the cultural thing. That's what makes us special. We'll be like, hey, we're coming from Australia. This is what we've been doing, and now we're coming to you."
- Nat & Ayush, Founders of Feast Studio
Nat and Ayush © SILCOHAUS
The supper clubs will continue in a new city, for a new audience. Beyond that, they talk about building a test kitchen of their own. A space where they can develop products, consult on menus for other restaurants, produce their chilli oil at scale, source Nepalese ingredients that have never been easy to find in Bangkok. The kind of place where both of their skills live under one roof permanently.
Dessert service, Noka at the station © SILCOHAUS
They do not know exactly what it will look like yet. But they know what it will feel like. The same care, the same balance, the same instinct for when a table needs one more pop of colour. Just in a different room, on the other side of the world.
After the feast © SILCOHAUS
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Nat and Ayush run Feast Studio, a food and design practice based in Sydney. Find them at @feast_studio on Instagram.
