M’Ama Food: Immigrant-run catering mixes flavors in Milan
- Written by Marta Abbà
- Illustration by Orsola Sartori
- Edited by Ankita Anand
Blending traditions and experimenting with new combinations, a catering service that began at a refugee reception center is winning over Italian palates.
In the quiet of her sleek, steel kitchen, head chef Kokoevi is dressed in vibrant yellows, reds and greens. She’s getting an early start on dishes that need time to cool, before the rest of the team arrives. It’s not long before Cleir, a 34-year-old trans woman from Peru, is busy peeling potatoes, flashing a winning smile as she chats with colleagues.
Pamela, who is Roma and has lived in Italy “a long time”, started here as a kitchen assistant. Now, as well as being the team’s go-to pastry chef, she’s in charge of portioning and dietary plans. Allergies, intolerances, medically prescribed diets or personal preferences – she knows them all and adheres to them with a pharmacist’s precision.
Salam, from Bangladesh, stacks a cart with trays. The most recent addition to the team, colleagues say he’s shy and doesn’t speak Italian – but he jokes with Pamela, who says he’s always a good laugh to work with. For now, his main duty is dishwashing, but over time he will learn more.
Six days a week, 100 “world-inspired” lunch plates – and as many for dinner – emerge from M’Ama Food’s small kitchen in Milano Greco, a migrant quarter of the city populated by people from across the globe. Varied, tailored menus go to hospitals, cooperatives and schools.
Every day is different, but Kokoevi, who is originally from Togo and has been cooking since she was a child, takes it all in her stride. Stirring a divine-smelling vat of tomato sauce, she explains that her kitchen works on principles of sharing culinary traditions and ensuring that no one feels different or “less.”
From experiment to enterprise
M’Ama Food was founded by 15 migrant women who met at a state-run refugee reception center, where they got involved in an educational cooking “laboratory” run by the charity Farsi Prossimo and exchanged recipes from their countries of origin.
Their first catering gig was at a block party, preparing African and Asian dishes for 70 people. Five years later, having secured their current space and assembled a skilled team, they ran a stand at Expo 2015 Milan, which had the theme “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life,” focusing on sustainable food production, nutrition and fighting world hunger.
“An event like that, with people arriving from all over the world and centered on food, helped us a lot in the next steps, both psychologically and financially,” Kokoevi says. “But we didn’t get carried away. We knew we couldn’t rely on the popularity gained in that international, open-minded atmosphere – something you don’t usually feel in Italy – for long.”
Italians often prove more loyal to their cuisine than even their religion. Many rarely stray from menus dominated by favorites like pasta, pizza and saffron risotto. And yet, with 15 years of hard work and tenacity behind them, M’Ama Food has won over locals, and gone from “a one-night urgency” to running cafeteria services at hospitals and assisted living facilities, as well as a catering for private and corporate clients.
Catering to all tastes
The cafeteria service does focus on Italian classics, but menus for business dinners, weddings, baptisms and birthdays are often more experimental. “Milan always pays attention to proposals with an exotic flair when they’re new,” Kokoevi notes, “but now, with catering, our challenge is to permanently win over the palates of first timers and earn the trust of those outside the ‘already convinced’ circle.”
Salam is keen to learn pasta and risotto dishes, though when he eats Italian food himself, he prefers pizza. Having joined the team a few months earlier, Cleir has levelled up to lasagna. But whenever she can, she gets causa rellena – Peruvian potato cake – onto the catering menu.
“We start by introducing new recipes at special request events to see if they’re liked and feasible,” Kokoevi says. “For them to become part of the daily canteen menus, they need to be practical enough. We should be able to prepare those items for 100 people at a time and distribute them across Milan. But I’m always ready to consider new proposals and try to integrate them.”
Pamela’s latest triumph was a “100% Roma” menu, featuring cabbage rolls stuffed with minced meat, goulash, filo pastry dishes and a pepper sauce. Other recipes that were ruled out for practical reasons are still enjoyed by staff. Pamela’s honey, apple and walnut cake is a team favorite, but she prepares simpler desserts like tiramisu and panna cotta for events.
"By showing that it is not obligatory to allow yourself to be exploited because you are a foreigner, you gain awareness of your rights.”
Dignity, autonomy and respect
Kokoevi believes that connecting over cooking techniques, flavors and a shared interest in nutrition has helped her team feel invested in the project, and in themselves. “Food has proven to be the right key for many to reclaim identity, autonomy and the desire to take control of their lives, even for those who learned to cook from scratch,” she says.
Most of the staff at M’Ama Food have experienced exploitative conditions since arriving in Italy. “I worked for some fellow countrymen in supermarkets and restaurants at the same time,” says Salam, wiping his hands on a shirt emblazoned with M’Ama Food’s logo. “I even tried a nightclub for three years. The pace was unbearable, with double and triple shifts daily.”
Cleir endured months of grueling shifts at a Peruvian restaurant in Milan, and even worse conditions at a Mexican joint. “I had to do multiple shifts for weeks without a day off,” she says. Now, she has free afternoons to roam the city and meet friends, whom she sees almost every day after work.
Having a steady job at M’Ama Food hasn’t just given her gastronomic skills, Cleir says, but also a dignity that “is simply linked to regular, honest work where one is respected and encouraged to have self-respect. By showing that it is not obligatory to allow yourself to be exploited because you are a foreigner, you gain awareness of your rights.”
About the author
Marta Abbà is an environmental physicist and freelance journalist focusing human, climate, digital and gender rights. She specializes in cross-media and cross-border reportage that aspires to erase borders altogether.
Read more on migration
Finding a foothold in Europe can be an immense logistical, economic, social and emotional challenge, but some immigrants are finding a sense of home in communities bound by belief.
With almost a third of young Portuguese living abroad, the country’s visa options and growing recognition of foreign qualifications help keep the economy on its feet. But despite so many immigrant workers coming from Portuguese-speaking countries, their degrees still don’t have the same clout as qualifications earned in Portugal.
“It’s just like a prison, but worse,” says Omar. “You don’t know when you’ll be out. You can’t do anything all day. You don’t even have your personal room. You feel crushed.”
College-educated migrants arriving in Italy face one of the harshest job markets in Europe. Compared to natives with similar qualifications, migrants are overqualified, underpaid, and underemployed. As a doctor from Venezuela learned, landing steady employment even in a field with shortages can be a long struggle.
High language requirements, a one-size integration policy, and discrimination. Despite the need for labour, landing a job in Sweden has become a hurdle race for college-educated migrants, a new joint investigation with Lighthouse Reports shows.
What happens when ordinary people become human rights defenders? In a village in Poland, volunteers shoulder the burden their state resists by helping those who cross the border from Belarus to seek asylum.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said that Denmark’s goal is to have zero asylum seekers. Since Denmark cannot stop people from seeking asylum within its territory due to its international obligations, or deport people as quickly as it would like to, it is turning to other tactics.
“It is structural racism. The right to asylum was established after World War Two, when Europeans were the ones fleeing. Now that they are no longer affected, they want to get rid of it.”
The Bibby Stockholm and Rwanda Plan are just the beginning. Activists, legal charities, and grassroots organisations expose how Offshore Detention policies are impacting migrants in the UK and what we can do to resist.
“I became totally helpless. I was there to earn money to support my family, but I was trapped abroad,” Sunita said.
“I not only understand the circumstances that lead people to move abroad, but I also share their experiences, know the problems and processes they went through to come here, and because immigrants tend to build networks to provide help for each other,” Landivar notes.
“For us, it’s an evil we have to accept. Faced with not finding work and not being fluent in the language…well, we take what we can get.” -Nani
