Growing up, Chynna Banner spent summers in the Philippines at her grandmother’s side, peeling garlic while adobo simmered on the stove and her aunts gossiped for hours. The kitchen pulsed with feminine energy and a kind of love that didn’t need words. Years later, those memories became the foundation for Tomboy, a supper club where food is a vessel for identity, culture, and chosen family. “Tomboy’s mission is to create a space for people who see themselves in the in-between—folks navigating identity, transition, growth as I was,” Banner says.

Tomboy began in Banner’s apartment with eight-person dinner parties in 2024 and then started popping up in wine bars and community spaces in Seattle, such as Other World and the Very Good Collective. In August, Tomboy celebrated its first anniversary by throwing a dinner at Light Sleeper, a wine bar on Capitol Hill, and they’ve hosted six successful dinners over the last 12 months.

The format of Banner’s supper clubs changes depending on the location, but at each location seating is arranged in small groups never fewer than four to preserve a sense of community. With each course, Banner shares the story behind the dish, balancing time between the kitchen and engaging with guests. The final course brings everyone together, encouraging diners to leave their table pods and mingle.

Each menu is intended to tell a story. For one Tomboy dinner, Banner created a vegetable dish inspired by kare-kare, a Filipino stew with roots in Indian curry. Traditionally, kare-kare is made with peanuts, oxtail, and a rich, oniony, peppery sauce. Banner’s version swapped peanuts for fermented buckwheat groat, which gave off a peanut-like aroma and made the dish safe for people with allergies. The base was cooked risotto-style, topped with guajillo puree, fresh vegetables, and a brown butter hojicha foam. The hojicha brought a deep, toasted flavor that echoed the richness of oxtail, even without the meat.

“When you eat it without context, it may not taste like kare-kare in the traditional sense,” says Banner. “But once you understand the references, the dish takes on new meaning. That’s why I always share some of the background, though not too much, because I want guests to bring their own memories to the table too. For me, the dish is rooted in nostalgia and my own cultural lens, but what I love is how people from different backgrounds still connect with it in their own way.”

Even the supper club’s name contains layers; in the Philippines, “tomboy” is slang for a lesbian, a label Banner proudly claims.

“Coming to terms with my sexuality was a big turning point,” she says. “It helped me trust myself enough to leap into cooking after an initial pursuit to become a nurse.” That jump happened when she was living in Florida and attending nursing school, while working part-time as a line cook. That side gig became her passion, and in September 2023, she moved to Seattle to join the acclaimed Filipino fine-dining restaurant Archipelago, which is famous for having staff tell stories related to Filipino American culture and history between courses.

Inspired by this approach of storytelling through food at Archipelago, Banner felt the pull to create something reflective of her own identity. “For me, truth is at the center of my process. Cooking is an exercise in who I want to become and what stories I want to share. It pushes me to dig deeper into the work and create food that’s compelling, that actually says something,” she says.

She describes it as a “third-culture supper club” because her life is shaped by living between influences. Born in Brooklyn and raised in a Jewish, Italian, and Russian neighborhood, Banner later moved to Orlando, surrounded by Latin communities.

“I felt at home in a bunch of different cultures that were not necessarily my own,” she says. “Latin culture feels like a third culture for me. I’m not Latin, but I have so many Latin friends who taught me how to make the food they grew up eating.”

The connections between Latin cuisines and Filipino food through Spanish colonialism is braided throughout Banner’s work. “There are so many similarities in the way we eat and the foods we prepare. The vegetables are often the same because of the shared climates in South America, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. Even the language we use to describe dishes overlaps. Some Latin recipes go by different names, but they’re almost identical to Filipino ones. And it’s not just the food, it’s the culture around it, the way recipes are passed down, that feels deeply connected,” she says.

Her earliest lessons in the Philippines, watching her grandmother and aunts cook adobo, bangus, pinakbet, misua, and bulalo, left a lasting imprint. “We never really verbalized how much we loved each other growing up, but I could always feel it watching my family cook for one another,” she says. “To me, that was magic.”

As Tomboy continues to grow, Banner plans to shift more of her focus on the menu creation, spending more time dissecting and researching the story she wants to tell through each dish and how they work together. “The intention is to craft a menu experience that is always getting better and able to constantly evolve and change,” she says.

This approach is inspired by her time at Archipelago, where embedding cultural memory into food is a lesson she carries forward with her work. “There’s always intention in the food that I make, but now I’m thinking about how I can dig truly deeper and answer questions that I haven’t thought about yet,” she says.

As Tomboy becomes more orchestrated and refined, Banner is also thinking about accessibility. She’s launching a series called Pizza & Friends by Tomboy, which will consist of “more casual, communal events that let me keep connecting with people in a laid-back way.” This month, she’s hosting the first two sold-out events in the series at Petite Bottle Shop and Open On Most Days, and October dates will be released soon. Then, on Sunday, October 5, she’ll present a multi-course dinner experience at Light Sleeper. Looking ahead, Banner plans to take Tomboy to different cities as a traveling popup starting with Orlando, where her culinary career started, as well as potentially New York and Manila eventually.

“Long-term, maybe it grows into a wine bar concept or a studio space,” she says. “But I’m not in a rush. Right now, the focus is grinding and expanding, staying true, and building something that lasts.”

Follow Tomboy on Instagram for updates.