Join MOFAD as we welcome mother-daughter-duo Roya Shariat and Gita Sadeh along with guest speaker Abena Anim-Somuah, James-Beard award-winning entrepreneur, writer, and Cherrybombe podcast host, for a conversation about their debut cookbook, Maman and Me: Recipes from Our Iranian American Family, and a celebration of Iranian-American culinary traditions!
This event includes small bites of recipes from Maman and Me. Ticket also includes a drink from TimeOut Market.
Tickets include the option to purchase Maman and Me by Roya Shariat and Gita Sadeh from our bookseller partner Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City.
ROYA SHARIAT
Roya Shariat is a Brooklyn-based writer and social-impact professional. She has worked for leading brands and organizations, including Chobani, Glossier, the ACLU, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Shariat writes a weekly newsletter on food and culture called Consumed and runs a popular cooking TikTok with her mother, Gita Sadeh, that has over sixteen million likes across the platform.
GITA SADEH
Gita Sadeh is a Maryland-based chef and early childhood educator. She has more than four decades of teaching experience and five decades of culinary experience. Sadeh is known for her cooking online and offline-she has catered events and gatherings from her home kitchen and taught Iranian cooking classes to families throughout the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Her thousands of fans on TikTok call her the “CEO of tahdig.”
ABENA ANIM-SOMUAH
Abena Anim-Somuah is a James-Beard award-winning entrepreneur, writer, and podcast host. She is the Founder of The Eden Place, a company whose mission is to use food to harness community. Abena is also the host of The Future of Food is You, a Cherrybombe Podcast Network show where she interviews emerging talent in the food world.
Born in Ghana and raised in Canada, food was always at the center of Abena’s universe. Her parents–busy PhD students when Abena was little–prioritized gathering the family around healthful, home-cooked meals. Recognizing the power food holds to bring people together, when Abena moved to New York City for college in 2014 she began hosting shindigs of her own. Her first dinner party was a Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show viewing party in her tiny apartment, where friends piled into the tiny kitchen to make and share quesadillas.
After graduating college Abena briefly relocated to the Bay Area to work in tech. But food kept calling, and before long Abena found herself back in NYC. In June 2020 she launched #fiveblackbakers, a social media campaign aimed at spotlighting Black culinary voices. The following year she created Le Digestif: a popular food-focused, literary Substack. The Eden Place launched in March 2022 with Friendly Style, its inaugural dinner party series, and hosted over 20 dinners and events across 3 cities. Abena is relaunching her newsletter in October 2023 dubbed Your Friend in Food. It will be a newsletter offering recs, musings, and more about all things happening in food.
KITCHEN ARTS & LETTERS
Kitchen Arts & Letters is a bookstore devoted to food and drink, with titles imported from around the world. They emphasize works on food culture and innovation.