Arizona’s Ark of Taste Foods with Chef Amber Sampson

Chef and Cultural Anthropologist Amber Sampson brings you on a journey of taste around Arizona’s heritage food history. Sampson will expand on Arizona’s Ark of Taste, a living catalog of foods facing extinction, including the local, heritage, and native foods that are unique to Arizona’s food history. Come learn about favorites, like White Sonora Wheat, teapry beans, and Ark of Taste foods like Black Sphinx dates, cholla buds, chilitipin pepper, and more. In learning about Arizona’s food history, the people, producers, communities, and cultures behind each bite, you can better support your local food community and create a more sustainable food system.

Amber Sampson explores the world through food as a trained professional Chef, who also holds degrees in Cultural Anthropology, Food Systems Sustainability, and a Master’s in Gastronomy. She studied food and race at Harvard University, brought ancient bread to life with fellow Anthropologists from Yale, and was awarded the prestigious US Government’s Gilman Scholarship for archeological research with Arizona’s O’odham Nations. Sampson’s work brings present-day relevance to ancient meals, people, and cultures, giving others a taste and connection to our delicious past, revealing a more sustainable and understanding future. She sits on the Board of Directors for Slow Food Phoenix and was the Arizona representative for the Global Food Security Summit in Washington, D.C., and Terra Madre in Italy in 2024. Sampson has worked for Boston University, S’edav Va’aki Museum, Arizona State University, and the Arizona American Indian Tourism Association. Sampson was awarded the Arizona Humanities 50th anniversary climate conversations grant for a documentary on her food research.