I sat down with Fátima or “Fafá” Langa, the owner of Muqueca, to talk about her background and the history of her restaurant.

Fafá grew up in a large family on the island of Vitória, Espírito Santo, off the southeast coast of Brazil. When she was young, both her parents passed, so she was raised by her adoptive Italian mother.

“We cooked Brazilian food but also lots of pasta, lasagna, and bread. We made pasta fresh at home and never bought pasta. My mom was not crazy about fish – she was more into meat because we had a farm. So she likes meat and Italian food. There are a lot of Italians in Brazil, especially in Espírito Santo. My gran gran came from Italy in the 1800s.” 

Fafá has always loved to cook. Every Sunday, the entire family would come together for a meal and she would help her mother in the kitchen. Even as her siblings got married and the family expanded, the Sunday gatherings would continue. Feeding her growing family was how Fafá fell in love with cooking. But Fafá didn’t pursue it as a career yet. 

“At that point, we didn’t have gastronomy in Brazil, maybe if we had, I’d go into that, but we didn’t so I decided to be an accountant.” 

When Fafá was 32, she immigrated to the United States in 1987 and worked as an au pair in North Carolina. She met her ex-husband, got married, and they moved to New York where they both worked as tour guides for Brazilian and Spanish-speaking tourists. 

“My dream was always to cook. At that point in New York I decided to do hospitality management. I was a year and a half into school when I said I wanted to work in a restaurant. So I start to ask, going door to door to restaurants in Manhattan, asking for a job, and they all ask for experience! But I said how can I get experience if I don’t get to work in a restaurant? I told them, I need someone to take me so I can get the experience! It was very hard, you know, it was unbelievable how hard it was. So I said, ‘I’m not going to do this’, I’ll stick with being a tour guide.”

But Fafá knew that the tourism industry geared towards Latin Americans was dwindling due to the countries’ depreciating currencies, making it more difficult for people to afford travel to the states. 

In 1999, her ex-husband went on a trip and passed by a small store that happened to be a Brazilian restaurant, and when he went inside, the owners shared with him that they wanted to sell the restaurant.

“My husband went back to New York and said, ‘Fafá, I found a place for us to open a restaurant for you, so you’re gonna get your experience.”

When she asked where it was, he said it was in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“I said, ‘Huh?! I’m going to leave New York?’ I loved New York. ‘I’m going to leave New York, oh no!’ And he just said, ‘Ohh yes! We’re going.’ And then we moved!”

They bought the restaurant, which was located two blocks away from where Muqueca is today. It was a small self-serve spot with 11 tables that could hold 25 people, but getting the restaurant off the ground was difficult as Fafá had no professional experience in the food industry.

“It was very hard in the beginning because we thought the business was doing well when we bought it, but it was not, so I had to start from the beginning and build a clientele – it was very stressful.”

She decided to feature moqueca, a savory and rich Brazilian seafood stew served in a clay pot with rice that her hometown Vítoria was known for.  

That dish helped revive the restaurant. 

Eventually, it was a regular occurrence for people to stand in line for two hours to try Fafá’s moqueca. Fafá didn’t like the self-serve model, so she changed it to à la carte and slowly introduced more dishes to the menu. After splitting ways with her husband, Fafá took on full management of the restaurant in 2012, never shying away from a challenge, despite dishes that took lots of time and ingredients to prepare. “With feijoada, it comes with a pot and dishes with beans and meats, fried plantains, rice, collard greens – it’s a lot of dishes for one person. This makes my kitchen very busy all the time. I have to have a prep guy come early in the morning to prepare. Feijoada takes a day and a half to prepare because we have to salt the meat, take the water, and clean. It takes a little while.”

But it’s worth it. “Most people think Brazilian is a lot of salt, garlic, and onion, but I think they realize it has other flavors too. It’s a mix of cultures here, people from all over the world are in Cambridge, and they like to try different foods, and they start to try and notice it’s different.” It’s clear Fafá has never taken shortcuts in life, and her food showcases her commitment to celebrating the diverse influences that make up Brazilian cuisine and cooking for a growing and changing family of patrons in Cambridge. 

According to Fafá, “Here it’s like eating at home.” As one of the few Brazilian restaurants in the area, Muqueca is like a second home for many of the Brazilian and Portuguese customers that have been coming with their families for lunch every Sunday after church since the restaurant first opened.

Among the restaurant’s most popular dishes is moqueca, a seafood stew. Fafá serves the dish in clay pots produced in Vitória at a factory that she says has been operating for over 500 years. She worked with the factory to produce specially made clay pots that could hold servings for a single individual, as opposed to traditionally larger pots. Since the pots are fragile, she flew back home herself to Vitória with empty suitcases just to fill them with clay pots.

I asked Fafá why the restaurant was named Muqueca when the dish was spelled ‘moqueca.’ She laughed and explained that since the dish is pronounced with a ‘u’ sound, she decided to change the spelling to make it easier for everyone to know how to say it. 

“I named it Muqueca to honor the dish that is from my town. Because everybody who is Brazilian, when they say ‘moqueca’, they think of two states in Brazil: mine which is Espírito Santo, and Bahia, which is another kind. The difference is that my state’s moqueca is more indigenous than the Portuguese style, so we don’t use palm oil or coconut milk. We use olive oil and more natural seed oils – what the indigenous people used in their cooking. In Bahia, the influence is from Africa because a lot of slaves were in Bahia, so they brought palm oil and coconut milk, which is in their moqueca. But here, I decide to please everyone, so I cook both! On the menu people can choose which one they prefer.”

Thanks for reading this Drop Clock Club newsletter. To join an upcoming dinner at Muqueca (we’ll be having fried yuca, moqueca with fish, shrimp, and mussels, feijoada, and flan and passionfruit mousse) please purchase a ticket here. 

I’m also working on gathering all of my past interviews for new members to read, so be on the lookout for that on the site.

Hope to see you soon,

Han

I sat down with Kurban Hasan, the owner of Silk Road Uyghur Cuisine to talk about his background and how he opened the first Uyghur restaurant in Boston.

Hasan is Uyghur, a Muslim ethnic group with a population of several million that has historic ties to the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, and from the Xinjiang region in the northwestern region of China. After studying business in Turkey for five years (he speaks fluent Turkish!), he came to the United States in 2016 with his wife, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law. 

For a while, Hasan’s mother-in-law was the chef of the restaurant while his wife worked at the front with Hasan. The restaurant became popular with international Chinese students who wanted to eat Uyghur food and with those seeking more halal options in the city, and eventually, Hasan proudly tells me that it’s now possible for his mother-and-law and wife to not have to work at the restaurant as much as before. Some popular dishes that Silk Road Uyghur Cuisine are known for are their spiced bone-in chicken served over hand-pulled noodles and their lamb kebabs.

From there, the family opened their second location in Allston, which they closed because of COVID-19. And in 2021, they opened their third location in Brookline on Beacon Street by Coolidge Corner, which was an incredibly popular spot for locals. Unfortunately, in February 2023 there was a kitchen fire, but after a year of renovations, they plan to reopen soon (we’ll be hosting another Supper Club with them in Brookline once they open).

I spoke with Hasan to learn more about his life and the story of Silk Road Uyghur Cuisine.

How did you decide to open this restaurant?

I used to study in Turkey. I came to the United States in October 2016, and then I asked, ‘What am I going to do?’ My wife was studying [biology at UMASS] at the moment, and I needed to support my family, so I did the delivery job for a couple of months to know the market and area, and then we got the information that someone was trying to sell this restaurant.”

We opened this restaurant in 2017 and continued the business [as a pizza shop] for three months and then gradually changed the menu to Uyghur. We didn’t know how to manage the business, and we didn’t have a chef or employees. We as a family came into the kitchen. One in the front, and one to run the business. Gradually, we hired someone.

So then did you also do the cooking?

Still, yeah, still! I still do the cooking [laughs]. The preparation now actually I have a chef, a prep person, but all the time I check the food quality. I need someone from the family to be in the kitchen.

It’s hard to write about Silk Road Uyghur Cuisine without acknowledging the hardships Hasan and his family are experiencing back home. Reading this GBH article published in 2019 is how I found out about the restaurant (which I recommend folks read since it does a much better job at explaining things). Hasan did not want to be political when speaking about his restaurant, but he acknowledges that it hangs heavily on his in-laws, as his father-in-law is currently being held in a “political reeducation camp” in northwest China. His wife’s family has not been able to contact his father-in-law since November 2019. 

Hasan told me that there are only about 200 Uyghur people living in Massachusetts, and when he and his family moved to Boston, they knew very few people. Through running the restaurant, they were able to meet people of all backgrounds and build a support network that has kept his family’s spirit alive.

We’ll be trying 4 of their dishes and hear more from Hasan (he told me he’s quite shy and does not prefer to speak in front of large groups, but would make an exception for us). To join an upcoming dinner, reserve a spot here.

Hope to see you soon,

Han

Steven’s personality is what makes Michael’s Deli so special. He’s constantly moving; he’ll take orders at the front and continue the conversation with customers as he runs to the back to toast pastries in the oven and slice pastrami, which they cook on site daily and go through 400 to 500 pounds a week.

Peljovich has spent his entire career in hospitality. He always knew he couldn’t sit behind a desk, so after getting a degree in hospitality management, he worked as a restaurant manager opening restaurants for popular corporate chains in Ohio, Washington D.C., and Atlanta. Eventually, he was offered a job at a restaurant group for a similar role, or so he thought. It paid less, but came with a decent signing bonus. Peljovich found out after starting that his job was not about improving operations by training staff, but by laying off staff. As a people-oriented person, he hated that it became known that if he was coming to your restaurant, people were going to get fired. To make matters worse, once the original management team was let go, Steven was tasked with hiring a new team, training them, and once they were in tip-top shape, he’d have to leave immediately to go to the next restaurant and restart the process. 

He hated his job, but his daughter was just born. He stuck out the job for two years and handed in his resignation the very first day he could.

Afterwards, he spent nine years running the Hard Rock Cafe in Boston, but butt heads with corporate over disagreements on how to authentically support the communities they were in. Steven knew he didn’t want to compromise his commitment to giving back locally, so started looking for a business he could acquire.

Around this time, Steven’s father-in-law had become a regular of Michael’s Deli, coming in once a week after his walk around Castle Island, and every time he came in, he’d say to Michael that if he was ever looking to sell his business, he had a son-in-law experienced in the restaurant industry who was looking to run his own thing. This conversation happened for years, unbeknownst to Steven. 

Finally one day in December 2011, Steven’s father-in-law walked into Michael’s Deli and said to  Michael, “You look really tired today.” Michael, who had been running the deli since 1977, misheard (or maybe heard what he wanted to hear) and agreed, saying, “You know what? I think I am ready to retire.” On New Year’s Eve, Steven and Michael sat down at a table inside the deli and began the process of transferring the business. 

Steven has kept all the original recipes of Michael’s Deli, but one item regulars know is distinctly Steven’s are his “krazy knishes,” knishes with a different filling each week. He started making three new krazy knishes per week as a fun challenge for himself and to put a smile on the faces of customers who like to  pop in to check what the new crazy flavor is. Thirteen years later, Steven estimates he’s made over 1,600 types of krazy knishes from blueberries to mac-n-cheese to “mishigas,” a combination of brisket, kishke, and kasha. 

“I tell people, want to play a game? Give me a real thing and ask me if I’ve turned it into a knish. I can probably tell you that I have. ”

As we were talking, a woman came in to ask for some containers so she could share some soup she made with coworkers. Without missing a beat, Steven says of course, but not before he makes jokes about how it will cost her $28,000. The woman laughs and says, “You’re too good. As you always are.” While this interaction felt like a fortuitous moment of witnessing Steven’s generosity, this is the kind of dynamic that plays out all the time in his shop. 

Steven’s giving spirit is second nature. The love customers have for Peljovich is a testament to his active involvement in the community and the countless charities he supports. To him, giving back from the start was a no-brainer as he acknowledges that Michael’s Deli would not be standing, especially post-pandemic, if not for the support of customers over the decades.

We’ll be gathering at Michael’s Deli to try an assortment of tasty bites and chatting with Steven. To sign up and purchase a ticket, please go here.

Pandey discovered his passion for nutrition during school. He came to Boston as a student and completed his undergraduate degree in computer science at Tufts, but was always fascinated by the lifestyle differences between his home country and the Northeast. 

After graduation, Pandey worked as a database engineer in the late 90s, but found it hard to find work after the dotcom bubble burst. To stay in the country, he decided it would be a good time to explore his other academic interests and pursued an MBA, then a Masters in Nutrition and Food History.

Pandey worked with a professor to conduct field research on the streets of Boston, interviewing residents, restaurant goers, and restaurateurs to understand how the city’s relationship with gastronomy was shaped.

He took a risk and decided to open the first Nepali restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire because it was the only town he could afford to open up a spot. His friends and family thought he was crazy for choosing a town that at the time was not known for international cuisine.

“When I started, most of the people told me, ‘Are you crazy? Why did you come to New Hampshire?’ Back then, when I went there, people would touch my skin to see if some color would come off, it was that kind of time. I was so surprised. But gradually, they liked the food.”

Cafe Momo was a hit from the start with locals. 

“At the beginning, they would order one plate of momos for three or four people, but quickly people started ordering a whole plate of momos for themselves. It got very popular.”

He explained that his restaurant was one of the first to list nutritional info on the menus and that most of his customers were patients and workers from the nearby hospitals.

Pandey eventually opened two more in New Hampshire: Base Camp in Hanover and Durbar Square Restaurant in Portsmouth and brought on his family to help operate them. Around this time, Pandey was approached by NBC in New York to star in a weekly program for a cooking show rooted in healthy techniques from Nepalese culture and his research at Tufts in nutrition, but the project fell through. After a decade, he got tired of the grueling hours of owning three popular restaurants, so he sold them and moved back to Nepal with his family for a well-deserved break. 

But after a few years, he got excited about opening a new restaurant again and in 2020, Base Crave was born.

So what makes Base Crave’s Nepalese cooking so healthy? According to Pandey, it’s a combination of three things that was the basis of his research at Tufts. First, timing. Pandey only adds a small amount of oil at the end the cook time to limit saturation, so while he jokes there’s no showy tall flames and smoke, he’s okay with his restrained cooking style because it’s healthier. Second, small-batch cooking. Dishes are made-to-order to maintain freshness: “It’s time-consuming, but it’s better. You can control the dish to suit people’s needs.” Third, ingredients. Base Crave avoids most seed oils, lightly spices the food, and packs each dish with fresh vegetables, which is why the restaurant has become popular amongst vegetarians, including former Harvard president Larry Bacow, who Pandey tells me made up a significant number of his referrals.

We’ll be gathering at Base Crave for a group meal and trying a selection of dishes chosen by Bhola Pandey for $30. To reserve a spot and purchase a ticket, please go here.

Joseph and his family immigrated from Korea to the United States when he was young for better healthcare for his older sister, who is severely disabled. Joseph explained that in Korea, people with disabilities are often cast aside by society, so when he and his sister enrolled in high school in Orange County, his family was heartened by how the community welcomed them – to the point where his sister became one of the most popular students at school.

In California, his mother worked at the original Korean tofu house, also called ‘Kaju’, a modern Korean-American portmanteau of ‘Ka’ for California and ‘ju’ for ‘house of food’ which is why many Korean restaurants on in southern California are called ‘Kaju’. She started as a waitress, eventually working her way up to manager. When Joseph’s mother opened a franchise of Kaju Tofu House, the owner, who was also a Korean immigrant, taught her everything she knew, and in an uncommon move for the restaurant industry, let his family buy back all the equity for the one location so that they could spin off on their own. They eventually made their way to Boston, opening up Kaju in Allston.

According to Joseph, it was ‘by the grace of one woman,’ the original owner, that his family was able to start their own business. 

Joseph spent much of his childhood helping around the family restaurant, but in a classic child-of-restaurant-running-parents way, never wanted to go into the restaurant business himself. However, it’s clear that his having to grow up quickly, whether it was from nights spent cooking for himself as a child because his family was still at the hospital with his sister to looking out for his older sister as a younger sibling instilled a life of service and generous spirit that makes him a standout restaurateur.

After working full-time at Kaju, Joseph served in the U.S. military for three years and then pursued a Masters at Boston College in Education, inspired by how the education system supported his sister. But when his parents were ready to retire and move back to California, Joseph realized he didn’t want to lose the restaurant that had defined his family. So he offered to buy back the business from his parents and set off on his own.

As someone who was raised in a restaurant environment, Joseph has the instinctive business acumen of an industry vet but also a keen understanding of the American food scene. For example, it was Joseph’s idea to drop the ‘Tofu’ from ‘Kaju Tofu House’ so people wouldn’t assume that all they sell is tofu (although their stews made with fresh, silken tofu are delicious). He’s also adjusted menus to adapt to the new generation of more budget-conscious international students. Kaju has always used fresh chilis, so while there’s more variability depending on how much sun-exposure the chilis get, Joseph would rather have a depth of flavor than use a packaged spice mix. At the same time, Kaju offers five spice tiers to meet everyone’s tolerance levels, ranging from ‘White’ to ‘Extra Spicy.’ 

During peak season, you can expect to see lines of students and working professionals wrapped around the small restaurant, hoping for available tables. While Kaju is adored by the Korean community – from tourist groups from Korea proclaiming the food is even better than back home to a famous Korean baseball player who came to Kaju three times during his Boston trip which caused the restaurant to swarm with fans – Kaju’s warm interior and equally sunny staff make it a welcoming environment for all types of people.

Joseph explained, “You know those restaurants in Downtown Boston and the North End that say they’ve been around for a hundred years? I want that for Kaju.”

With Joseph at the helm, Kaju couldn’t be a more deserving restaurant to join the greats.

Kaju will be hosting a special supper club series in partnership with Drop Clock Club featuring two menus selected by Joseph. We’ll be trying dumplings, seafood and kimchi pancakes, korean-style barbeque chicken, stews, traditional banchan (side dishes), and more. If you’ve ever wanted to try good Korean food with some guidance, this is it. To purchase a ticket, please go here.

“It was hard to adjust. I had my full-time profession in the Philippines and then I came and we didn’t have family here. It was just me and my husband.”

But Janeth was able to quickly find community because according to her, “Filipinos love gatherings.” When out in public, all it took was a short interaction to find others, “I would say ‘Oh! Are you Filipino?’ And we would do a quick contact exchange, invite them to get together, and if you know one, then you’re gonna get to the next one!”

It was through these gatherings that Janeth’s skill for homestyle Filipino cooking shined.

“When we do get togethers, we have food. So I brought my food. And eventually, they all said, ‘Janeth, can you just cook us your food because it’s so good?’ so I said, ‘Okay, just buy me the groceries and I will cook.’ and I would cook for the whole group and then take home the leftovers and that would be my food for the week. I’d save money on that!

“But when I arrived in the United States, there was no Filipino food. I went to the supermarket, and I didn’t recognize their vegetables! I’d say, ‘I need an eggplant’ and then they’d show me an eggplant so big and fat – not like the long asian eggplant – and they would say, ‘here is an eggplant’ and I said, ‘this is NOT an eggplant haha!’

“And the meat here, you know it’s frozen. In the Philippines, the meat is freshly butchered in the morning, and it’s all sold during the day so that the following morning it’s new again. The taste of the meat is different, I didn’t like it!”

“So I called my mom almost every day to teach me how to cook. So the way I cook here at the restaurant is the same way I cook at home. I would ask my mom, ‘how can I cook the longganisa, the tocino, the tapa?’ and I learned to adapt the recipe based on what was available at the American grocery stores.”

“Then my friends started say, ‘Oh, we’re tired of buying the groceries, can you just do that part too and we’ll pay you because we don’t know the ingredients of what you want’ since I just told them to buy the key ingredients but the spices and seasonings and small stuff I would take care of.”

In the summer of 2002, Janeth decided to research how to get a food license as demand for her cooking had spread across the Filipino community beyond her friend group. After obtaining her food certification, the orders started pouring in for her home business. “Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I would be cooking for events, parties, weddings. In 2004, I started catering for offices twice a month.”

In 2012, Janeth gave up her license because by then, she had four kids and needed to drive them to activities and focus on raising them as her husband worked as a computer engineer.

After a long hiatus from cooking, she decided to open a restaurant in August 2023 in downtown Boston on 71 Broad St. At this primarily takeaway joint, she serves the same hearty homestyle dishes she grew up on to office workers to tourists during morning and lunch rushes. The most popular dish is the classic chicken Adobo, made with lemon, vinegar, and spices, one of the dishes Drop Clock Club will be trying at our next supper club – purchase a ticket here!