Norma Listman, an expert in traditional Mexican cuisine and “the historical periods of Mexican gastronomy.” Saqib Keval, whose familial lineage extends from the Kutchi people of South Africa, to Ethiopia, and then to Kenya, who honed his culinary skill in the South of France. Veritable cooking cognoscenti, the pair combine their expertise at Masala & Maiz in an “organic blending of [the] cultures and generations” who have been historically afflicted by “colonization and displacement,” specifically those of South Asia, East Africa, and Mexico. They consider food a tool of progressivism and their establishment as a means towards greater social awareness; the experience is, in sum, entirely its own. Go for lunch and try the uttapam, the esquites makai pakka, or the aguachile. You won’t find options like these elsewhere. —Jack Sullivan

Jack Sullivan is an Associate Editor at AIR MAIL