Restaurants, Cooperatives & Art Collectives
Saqib’s work is grounded in social justice movement building and bringing radical political education to the table. He is known for creating food businesses rooted in community & mutual aid. Saqib lives in Mexico City where he opened the restaurants Masala y Maiz and Mari Gold as well as the worker-owned cooperative Super Cope with his wife, co-chef & co-owner Norma Listman Sanchez. Saqib is also based in Oakland, CA where he founded People’s Kitchen Collective as a grassroots political project at the intersection of art, food & social justice. PKC co-founders Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik & Jocelyn Jackson have joined Saqib to make PKC an internationally renowned art project.
Masala y Maiz
Masala y Maiz explores the migration of people, culinary techniques, ingredients, cultural food ways and political movements between South Asia, East Africa & Mexico. The food of Masala y Maiz is intensely personal, based on the research, family recipes & histories of the co-chefs & co-owners Norma Listman & Saqib Keval. The restaurant is a reflection of the chefs’ beliefs that food can be used as a powerful tool for social justice and that chefs have the responsibility to advocate and work towards bettering labor conditions for everyone in the food industry.
Since opening in 2017, Masala y Maiz has become internationally renowned and regularly been listed as one of the best restaurants in Latin America. The restaurant has been featured in multiple publications (like the New York Times, Food & Wine Magazine and Vogue) and was listed by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Greatest Places in the World.
Mari Gold
Mari Gold is a new casual restaurant from Chefs Norma Listman & Saqib Keval of the Masala y Maiz Group in Mexico City. The restaurant is a more casual take on the intersections of Indian & Mexican foodways that they have become known for.
Located in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood next to the Bosque de Chapultepec and some of the city’s most impressive art galleries, Mari Gold is a daytime restaurant serving breakfast, lunch & brunch from 10am to 5:30pm Wednesday to Monday.
The restaurant is known for it’s stunning architecture, extensive natural wine program, local beers & fermented drinks, specialty coffee bar and the attached worker-owned cooperative store Super Cope that was launched by the Masala y Maiz group during the pandemic to build more sustainable systems of support for food chain workers.
Super Cope
The Super Cooperative for Food Chain Workers (Super Cope) started as an initiative of Chefs Saqib & Norma during the 2021 pandemic as a model to ensure labor and food security in the community. The Super Cope is a grocery store focused on fresh local produce, small batch liquors, natural wines, dairy, ceramics, Mexican craft, kitchenwares, and local coffee. The cooperative is attached to the Mari Gold and both businesses work closely together to increase financial stability and labor security for restaurant workers, farmers and producers. With Super Cope, Norma & Saqib are proposing a more worker & community focused model to their industry peers.
Super Cope is owned collectively by workers in the Masala y Maiz group.
People’s Kitchen Collective
Saqib founded The People’s Kitchen Collective in 2007 as a grassroots political project at the intersection of art, food & social justice. As the project has grown, co-founders Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik & Jocelyn Jackson have joined Saqib to make PKC an internationally renowned art project. The People’s Kitchen Collective has been featured in museums like the Smithsonian, The Museum of African Diaspora, The Jack Shainman Gallery and has received fellowships from the Rainin Foundation & United States Artists. PKC is currently a recipient of the 2021 Creative Capital Fellowship.
