Join us for an intimate evening with Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a social entrepreneur and founder of Port of Mokha, the world's highest rated coffee from Yemen. He'll be joined by author and BasBaas Foods founder Hawa Hassan to discuss coffee’s history, messy politics, and the revolutionary movement of third culture storytellers reclaiming their heritage through food.
Your ticket includes Syrian cookies from Eat Offbeat along with a selection of beverages from Port of Mokha and Coffee Project New York and the chance to taste award-winning and very rare coffees from Yemen.
This program is made possible by our sponsor, Chelsea Market.
An Ocean in a Cup is the third in a four-part series exploring Indigenous Foodways that will take place at the Makers’ Studio in Chelsea Market.
MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI
Growing up between Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Yemen, Mokhtar Alkhanshali comes from an ancient lineage of farmers that traces back to when the world’s first coffee was cultivated in his home province of Ibb over five centuries ago.
After several years as a prominent San Francisco-based community organizer working on civil rights issues affecting Arab, Muslim and immigrant communities, Mokhtar began focusing on his family’s roots as coffee farmers in Yemen. Seeking to reverse Yemen’s nearly lost art of coffee cultivation, he founded Port of Mokha. Combining his knowledge of specialty coffee production, progressive infrastructure strategy, and community organizing, Mokhtar has helped to reverse the declining quality of Yemeni coffee and re-establish it as the one of industries' most treasured origins. In 2017 his coffee was rated as the number coffee in the world by the Coffee Review.
In 2020 he co-founded the non-profit organization 'The Mokha' Institute' with world renowned coffee educator, Willem Boot. The Mokha Institute is a US and Yemen-based nonprofit that believes in the power of coffee to provide economic security and social empowerment to help rebuild a nation devastated by war.
His work has been profiled in GQ, FastCompany, Vanity Fair, and New York Times, among others. Acclaimed author Dave Eggers’ NYT best-selling book, The Monk of Mokha, traces Mokhtar’s journey as a social entrepreneur and his harrowing escape from war-torn Yemen with his first coffee samples.
HAWA HASSAN
James Beard award-winner Hawa Hassan is a culinary triple threat: dynamic chef, TV personality and entrepreneur. She's the founder of Basbaas Food Sauce, a line of condiments inspired by her home country of Somalia, and a fast-growing brand that has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, Eater and more. Her first cookbook-meets-travelogue, In Bibi's Kitchen, shares recipes and stories from grandmothers—or bibis—in eight African countries, bordering the Indian Ocean.
PORT OF MOKHA
At Port of Mokha, we believe that the very best coffee does more than provide an incredible experience of drinking it. It creates ripples of positive impact that can improve lives, lift economies, and revitalize cultures. You can drink Port of Mokha because you want to support a worthy cause. Or because it just happens to be the best coffee in the world. Enjoy.
COFFEE PROJECT
Coffee Project New York envisions a coffee community we can all be proud of. Our mission as a coffee business is to improve the quality of life for every person in the coffee supply chain, from producers to consumers.
CHELSEA MARKET
Located in the heart of New York City's Meatpacking District, Chelsea Market is a food and retail marketplace with a global perspective