Our Shared Future will bring seven one-night-only OzHarvest dinners to Refettorio OzHarvest Sydney during Vivid Sydney from 22 May to 11 June 2026.
As dusk settles over Surry Hills, Crown Street begins to change character. Cafés dim their lights. Office workers disappear into side streets. The city exhales. Then, behind the discreet frontage of Refettorio OzHarvest Sydney, another kind of evening begins – one measured not by urgency, but by arrival.
Tables are set. Glasses catch the first glow of candlelight. In the kitchen, rescued produce – ingredients that only hours earlier risked becoming waste – is transformed into something deliberate and beautiful. Guests will take their seats slowly, aware that this is more than dinner. It is a gathering shaped by purpose.
During Vivid Sydney 2026, Our Shared Future will return to Refettorio OzHarvest Sydney as a seven-night dining series that places food, sustainability and community at its centre. Presented by OzHarvest as part of the wider Vivid Sydney program, the event will bring some of New South Wales’ most respected chefs into the kitchen for a sequence of one-night-only collaborations, each built around rescued ingredients and shared responsibility.
Running across select evenings from 22 May to 11 June 2026, Our Shared Future will invite diners not only to eat, but to think differently about what a meal can mean.
Our Shared Future Begins at the Refettorio
To understand Our Shared Future, it helps to understand the room in which it takes place.
Refettorio OzHarvest Sydney is unlike most Sydney dining rooms. By day, it operates as a free restaurant for people experiencing food insecurity, serving nourishing meals prepared from rescued food. At night, through its “Pay It Forward” model and special events, it opens to the wider public – not as a charity showcase, but as a functioning expression of dignity, hospitality and shared citizenship.
The room itself feels intentionally warm: timber, soft lighting, long communal tables. Nothing is accidental. Every detail reminds guests that eating together remains one of the oldest forms of social connection.
That atmosphere makes Our Shared Future feel especially suited to this setting. Unlike many festival food events, it is not built around spectacle. There will be no demonstrations, no staged theatrics. Instead, the focus remains on the table: what arrives on it, who prepared it, and what conversations it makes possible.
Our Shared Future and the Story of Rescued Ingredients
At the heart of Our Shared Future lies a simple idea: good food should not go to waste.
OzHarvest has spent more than two decades making that principle visible. Founded in Sydney in 2004 by Ronni Kahn AO, the organisation has grown from a single van rescuing surplus food into Australia’s leading food rescue charity, now saving hundreds of tonnes of food every week and redistributing it to communities in need. Its yellow vans have become familiar symbols across the city – practical, recognisable and quietly hopeful. OzHarvest
That mission shapes every plate served during Our Shared Future. Up to 95 per cent of each menu will be created using rescued New South Wales produce – vegetables, fruit and pantry staples that would otherwise have entered landfill despite remaining perfectly edible.
It is a reminder that sustainability need not always arrive through sacrifice. Sometimes it arrives plated beautifully, shared generously and remembered long afterward.
Our Shared Future Through Seven Guest Kitchens
Across seven evenings, Our Shared Future will invite a rotating roster of chefs to collaborate with Refettorio’s resident team.
Among them will be Junda Khoo of Ho Jiak, pastry chef Jade Gilmour, Syrian cook and educator Racha Abou Al-Shamat, King Clarence’s Khanh Nguyen, open-fire specialist Remy Davis, pastry chef Lauren Eldridge and Jean-Paul El Tom of Baba’s Place. Each will contribute two courses, with OzHarvest chefs creating the remaining two – a shared menu that mirrors the event’s wider theme of collaboration.
The chefs themselves bring distinct culinary languages: Malaysian memory, Syrian hospitality, Vietnamese-Australian technique, Lebanese influence, pastry precision, open-fire simplicity. Together, those approaches suggest something broader about Sydney’s dining culture – a city increasingly defined by overlapping food traditions and layered migration stories.
Yet the chefs are only part of the story.
Through OzHarvest’s Nourish program, young people facing barriers to education and employment will also work alongside these kitchens, gaining practical hospitality experience and seeing new futures made tangible through food.
A Different Kind of Vivid Sydney Experience
Vivid Sydney often draws attention upward – toward projections, light installations and harbour reflections.
Our Shared Future offers a quieter counterpart.
Instead of looking outward, guests will look inward: toward a shared table, a plate, a conversation with strangers. It asks participants to slow down, something not always easy during festival season.
That stillness may become the event’s most memorable quality.
Between courses, guests will hear the movement of the kitchen behind them, the scrape of chairs, the hum of conversation. Outside, Crown Street traffic will continue its familiar rhythm. Inside, time will briefly reorganise itself around nourishment.
In a city increasingly conscious of sustainability but often unsure how to practice it meaningfully, Our Shared Future provides one answer: begin with food.
Event Details
Event: Our Shared Future
Dates: 22 May–11 June 2026 (selected evenings)
Time: 7pm–9:30pm
Location: Refettorio OzHarvest Sydney
Tickets: From $120
Official Website: Vivid Sydney – Our Shared Future