The last weekend of September featured another Cultural Cuisine Pop-Up Event: Saudi Arabian Pop-Up Dinner at the FogLit Poetry Jam. Chef Aman provided a bountiful meal and dessert.

On Friday evening, 30 guests enjoyed dinner, dessert & a show at the Saint John Arts Centre as part of of a collaboration between Sankara and FogLit Festival. The dinner was Saudi Chef Aman Aleid’s second Pop-Up event, he had earlier participated in Chop Chop week in February 2018. He was a wonderful host and very engaging with his dinner guests. On the menu was Chicken Kabsa with Infused Rice, Vegetable Stew…

There are so many aromas, textures and flavours which are familiar in a typical Canadian or North American daily food experience. Spaghetti sauce bubbling. PB on Toast. Coffee percolating. Grilled sandwich at Lunch. Baked turkey on the holidays. These familiar food experiences are part of the fabric of Canadian daily life. These are the foods available at grocery stores, foods which occupy pantries in homes. Al in all these are the things which nourish families. These are the foods upon which generations were raised. It is interesting then, to consider foods which are not part of the daily Canadian experience…

Last weekend was full of great events with the International Buffet and Fashion Show, International Culture Fest and Art Battle all crammed into two days!

Friday June 15th, 2018 — International Buffet and Fashion Show

We are fortunate enough to work with 10 emerging immigrant and refugee chefs. From birth they have learned techniques, recipes, flavor profiles of their traditional food. They market and sell their food for various reasons once they land in a new country. Some do it to gain courage, others to put food on their own table. Some use their cultural cuisine as a vehicle of communication with the community, others to retain connection to their own traditions. Often the reasons for preparing and selling their authentic cultural dishes overlap. What we remains is this: these brilliant chefs, differences aside, are…

As an Engineer, I always seek to control and optimize systems, processes, and in this case, our Sankara Cuisine Pop Restaurant events. To date have successfully planned and executed 6 cultural cuisine events in Saint John, New Brunswick at Five and Dime.

At these events, we play traditional music and serve traditional cuisine from different parts of the world. All of the food we serve is cooked by recent immigrants in the community. During our past Pop Up Restaurants we have shared Nigerian, Cameroonian, Chinese, Syrian, and Iranian cuisine paired with the right tunes to match. …

Often upon learning of our business and attempting, hesitatingly, to read our name, folks ask “Sankara, what does that mean?”. This article is an attempt to shed light on that very question, to explain the name Sankara and all that it denotes. A name holds a lot of value and purpose, for us at Sankara Cuisine this is especially true.

I invite all you curious supporters of ours to read on, if you have any questions or comments please post them here or email us; we’d be glad to answer them.

We begin the story of a man, his accomplishments…