A woman with long dark hair standing outdoors on a sunny day, wearing a beige sleeveless dress with pockets, near a pond and trees in the background.

Chef KERRY

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Taka Table is an experimental food art studio investigating new ways to engage with food. The studio is led by Kerry Clarkson-Valdivia, who comes from a multicultural heritage & diverse culinary background. Kerry is half Peruvian and half British and was brought up between Los Angeles, London, and Lima. She began cooking at the same time that she began a career in fashion, honing her technique from traditional cooking styles adopted while living in remote parts of the world. 

From her Peruvian background, Kerry has a foundation in the rich gastronomic traditions in the Amazon, Andes, and Coastal regions. She went on to live in Indonesia and India to practice local cooking customs, training in India with Ayurvedic chef Sandhya Vasudeva of the Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga tradition. 

Kerry fuses cultural and health traditions to offer catering for specialty events where handcrafted “food-from-scratch” is the priority. Her meals focus on fresh, top-quality produce from local farms that she transforms into a full in-situ experience, such as for ambient music festival Secular Sabbath in Joshua Tree, To Be Magnetic, Engel-Volkers, member events at Elsewhere, Burning Man camps and Ontopo, a site-specific artist retreat held at a Korean Buddhist temple in upstate NY. In these intimate but large-scale private events, she has cooked 5-course meals for over 100 people without sacrificing quality for scale. 

Kerry’s health & wellness background has permitted her to lead recipe development for Surya Spa at the Proper Hotel, creating a respected TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) longevity superfood recipe. Kerry has headed the kitchen on many specialty detox retreats, rotating between Ayurvedic and TCM wellness leaders. She has worked with Surya Spa for their first-ever 3-week retreat launch in Hawaii and has collaborated with Innata for multiple detox residencies in Palm Desert. Vegetable juicing, Seaweed Mineral Stews, and Bone Broths are key components, along with rejuvenating meal plans tailored to individual health needs.

Kerry’s eye for design, love of traditional cultures, and passion for health create a unique experience around emerging food culture. She’s developing a recipe book on experimental dishes for optimal living, to be launched later this year. 

Sample Menus
Snacking Table Art Table Buffet Table

Assorted Japanese pickled vegetables and cucumber sushi rolls on wooden and ceramic trays.
A colorful platter of sliced red, orange, and yellow chili peppers arranged around a pink dip with a swirl of brown sauce on top.
Outdoor table set with various foods including grapes, radishes, cheese, bread, and crackers, with three lit candles, against a backdrop of mountains and trees during sunset.
Unbaked Halloween-themed cookies decorated with black icing, shaped like bats, on a baking sheet.
Three homemade pizzas with tomato, cheese, and toppings, garnished with sprigs of herbs and set on a paper-lined surface.
Various dishes of Indian cuisine, including three pizzas topped with greens on black plates, a bowl of watermelon cubes, a platter of white round sweets, and a bowl of oranges on a table.
A series of nine fingerprint images with red centrally located pattern points.