A Weekend in Montreal with FOIL Gallery

At the end of March, the Kettl team traveled north to visit our friends at Foil Gallery in Montreal for a weekend of experiences that explored the interplay between tea, music, atmosphere, and energy. Hosting events is one of our favorite avenues for connecting with our community, as it fosters a sense of intimacy and centers the experiential alongside the sensorial—a dynamic that lies at the heart of what we strive to do at Kettl. The slate of events that the Foil Team put together as part of their IN:FUSION series was truly one of a kind, and it was one of the highlights of our year so far.

IN:FUSION is an immersive series built around an ambient DJ set and visual projections, hosted in Foil Gallery’s ‘immersive room’, paired with exceptional teas from a single country. The idea is deep listening and slow tasting, giving people space to truly experience what they’re drinking, seeing, hearing, and feeling. Kettl partnered with Foil to represent the teas of Japan in the March installment of IN:FUSION, sharing our Miyabi Sencha, Kumamoto Wakoucha, Nagano Soba Cha, and Soukou Matcha via a tasting flight that guests could experience before, during, and after their time unwinding to the sights and sounds of the evening.

With the lights dimmed low, under the wash of ambient soundscapes by Security Wing, the gallery was transformed, and guests developed their own connection with the teas that was inseparable from the multisensory experience at hand. Some napped in the immersive room with a cup of Soba, others sat at tables throughout the gallery space quietly catching up with old friends over a bowl of matcha, while some guests stayed with us at the counter to dive deeper into the stories of the teas we brought.

The day prior to the sold-out IN:FUSION EVENT, Kettl’s education manager, Armando Martinez, held a series of hands-on matcha workshops in Foil’s immersive room, transforming the sessions. Typically held in our cafe spaces, Armando worked with the Foil team to take full advantage of the atmosphere, using a projected animated backdrop as the only lightsource. The result was a class that focused on education and immersion in equal measure. Guests learned what distinguishes high grade matcha and how to prepare it, but there was a special emphasis on the feelings in the air in these sessions—how it feels to be in communion with one another and how it feels to make space for experiencing something ephemeral.

Armando reflected on the experience upon his return—

“As I unpacked our tools for the workshop, I realized I have a relationship with these objects. I've taken them many times to different places, and they serve specific purposes. This is the first time, though, that I have traveled with them so far. I had this sense that I was not just going to share a workshop, but I was going to share a part of myself, and a part of the relationship I have with these objects and to tea. It runs parallel to the physicality of djing vinyl, you lug these objects that you work with regularly to gigs, and ultimately your sharing your relationship not only to music but to the objects you practice with over and over again, and then share that relationship with others with the hope that they take something joyful away. It is a privilege to be able to do that”.

Outside of our time in the gallery, we explored Montreal, primarily through the city’s incredible food scene. Some of the highlights of the trip were flipping through the bins at La Rama Records, the ravioli at Pasta Pooks, browsing the shelves at Maktaba Bookshop, eating half the menu at Fleur et Cadeux, the curry at Pichai, and bringing back a few dozen bagels from St-Viateur Bagel for our New York team.