In February 2019, we celebrated our one-year anniversary by teaming up with Healthyish, a site from Bon Appétit about wellness and food, to host our first NYC breakfast. We hosted a conversation with four women from NYC’s restaurant industry about how they make wellness a priority in kitchens.
Forty women from across New York City and from a range of industries - from fashion to journalism to design to public policy to culinary arts - joined us at North African couscous bar Kish-Kash for delicious food conversation with women in NYC's restaurant industry - chefs, cookbook authors, restaurateurs, and food entrepreneurs - who are shifting food culture to one that celebrates wellness, diversity, local ingredients, and the environment.
We hosted breakfast in collaboration with Chef Einat Admony, a chef praised by The New York Times as a “fiercely determined chef” with “a deep love for the Moroccan table.”
We gathered at Kish-Kash, her newest concept opened at 455 Hudson Street on June 18, 2018. Named for the sieve traditionally used to make couscous, Kish-Kash is the first-ever couscous bar in New York City specializing in hand-rolled, hand-sieved Moroccan couscous and authentic North African Jewish cuisine. Kish-Kash is a casual dining concept with a specialized menu featuring real Moroccan couscous, braised meats, fish, salads, challah, pickled veggies, and wines from Israel and North Africa.
Chef Einat Admony treated us to some of her favorite dishes: green shakshuka with olive oil and za'atar; potatoes burekas with hard boiled eggs, schug, and shifka; Tunisian sandwiches with spicy tuna salad, eggs, olives, and harissa; hummus, charmoula, pitas; shuk salad with spicy greens (mustard leaves), cherry tomatoes, and avocado, with preserved lemon date dressing; spread of matboucha, chirchi (mashed pumpkin and carrot with harissa and lemon), and red tahini; and overnight Yemenite rolled bread served with grated tomato and schug.
New York Times and Bon Appétit food writer, Priya Krishna, moderated a heartfelt and thought-provoking conversation with our speakers:
Priya Krishna is a regular contributor for The New York Times, Bon Appétit, The New Yorker, and others, and the author of the upcoming cookbook, Indian-ish, to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2019.
Einat Admony is the chef and owner of Balaboosta, the fine-dining Middle Eastern restaurant; Kish-Kash, New York’s first couscous bar; and the beloved falafel chain, Taim. She is also the author of two cookbooks: Balaboosta, and the upcoming Shuk (Fall 2019), with Artisan Books. Einat grew up in Tel Aviv, worked as a cook in the Israeli Army, walked away from college after two months, roamed around Germany as a gypsy, then packed up her life to move to New York City. Now, after 20+ years in New York, Einat persists in her work and expansion with her new ventures, including Kish-Kash. Hand rolled couscous, deemed "fine as sand" by Eater, is served fresh there every day and is a perfect example of how Einat continues to innovate and push the food scene. “Cooking is a way to express my love and compassion for those around me,” Einat says. “It is also a way to connect the past with the present and future. The flavors, the smells, the sounds, they flood me with memories and bring me instantly back to my childhood. And make me feel whole.”
Hawa Hassan is the founder and CEO of Basbaas, the only line of Somali hot sauces and chutneys available in the U.S. Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the country’s brutal civil war, she escaped to Kenya along with her mother and four siblings. They lived in a refugee camp for a year before moving to an apartment. When Hassan was 7, her mom sent her to live with a family friend in Seattle, where she was eventually discovered as a model. After working in the industry for 14 years, Hassan decided to move on. Inspired by her mom, she created Basbaas sauce, a spicy relish that features flavors common in Somali cuisine and takes its name from the Somali word for chili.
Christina Lecki is the Executive Chef of Reynard. Lecki trained at April Bloomfield-backed establishments, the Breslin and White Gold. She is dedicated to eco-friendly practices in the kitchen. In Food + Wine, Priya Krishna writes, “Lecki takes sustainability in the kitchen to the next level.”
FUTURE OF WOMEN is a unifying platform that creates original multimedia content and programming by, for, and about women around the world to openly look at the pursuit of being a modern woman. In 2018, we began collaborating with award-winning female chefs worldwide, from Los Angeles to Mexico City to Tel Aviv to Tokyo, to host a monthly women's breakfast series featuring game-changing women such as Olympic athletes, Emmy-winning producers, top Billboard musicians, and New York Times journalists on topics including architecture, sports, art, music, journalism, and human rights.
Special thanks to Chef Einat Admony for a delicious breakfast and for joining our panel discussion, to the Healthyish and Bon Appétit teams for co-hosting with us, to our moderator Priya Krishna, to our panelists Hawa Hassan and Christina Lecki, to the Kish-Kash team for welcoming us into their space, to Casey Goch for providing Shreebs Coffee, and to Darragh Dandurand for these beautiful photographs.
Join the conversation at @futureofwomen
