90 Norma Listman: We met in 2016 in the Bay Area in California. Saqib Keval: We were working as cooks and artists and activists. I had founded a project called People’s Kitchen Collective and Norma was a frequent collaborator. Norma brought elegance, artistry and an incredible talent to the project. I always got excited when I got to work with her. Norma Listman: I was working as a cook and had an art practice where I used food as my primary medium. I focused a lot on Mexican foodways and history, especially to challenge the dominant understanding of how Mexico created so much of California food history, and has influenced much of how the world eats. Saqib used to work with me on some of my catering and art projects. He was always so fearless with his ethics and unapologetically political. We connected on that. Norma Listman: As cooks, we always centred culture and community in our work. I worked at restaurants that pushed the envelope of change in the industry and was always inspired to do better, make more lasting change and do it in my own way. Saqib Keval: While I worked as a cook, I was also working in food justice movements and in labor organizing. Food and politics were always connected for me. The more I worked in restaurants, the easier it was to identify the deeply rotten roots of white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy in the restaurant industry. I started dreaming early on of a decolonized restaurant model. I was inspired by the work of the Black Panther Party and many other resistance and food sovereignty movements of the global south, to re-envision how a community led food system could work. This was the inspiration behind People’s Kitchen Collective, but is also very much at the heart of what we do at Masala y Maíz. Norma Listman: We came together because of our shared belief in the potential of radical hospitality and the responsibility we have as chefs to use our kitchens, dining rooms and public platform to push for change. The restaurant industry, and the larger corporate food system as a whole, works hard to invisibilize the labor of the Black and Brown bodies at the heart of producing, processing, transporting and preparing the food. The system is deeply racist and exploitative. We recognized that if we wanted to change the industry, we needed to change how a restaurant operates from the very core. The previous work we did as artists, researchers, activists and cooks helped us hone our skills for critical thinking in how we approach the restaurant industry. We needed to imagine a new reality for restaurants, and a new future for our food system. It's this practice of radical imagination that grounds our vision for change in our restaurants, and our approach to our local food system. Saqib Keval: Masala y Maíz started as a research project looking at the migration of cooking techniques, ingredients and political movements between South Asia, East Africa and Mexico. Our dishes are created through research and lots of time spent exploring our respective cultures and family histories. Norma Listman: Our kitchen decentralizes Eurocentric techniques and kitchen culture. We work to highlight cooking techniques of the global south. For too long the restaurant industry, and food world as a whole, has upheld Eurocentric cuisine and French techniques as the ideal. It's a practice steeped in colonization and white supremacy. Our creative process is a practice of decolonization. We want to not only share our culture’s techniques, but also protect our customs and culinary traditions from being white-washed, commodified and stolen. We demand that people value our culinary techniques and we want to tell people about the rich history and complex techniques that come from the global south. An example would be in our moles: we know the mole is ready when the sauce starts to break and separates, forming a mirror of oil on the top. This is antithetical to the French sauces and techniques that are often upheld in the
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