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hen you first enter Masala y Maiz — a Michelin-starred renegade of a restaurant in Mexico City that has been profiled on Netflix’s “Chef’s Table” — you wouldn’t necessarily know that Oakland is at the heart of its soulful appeal. The concrete, brutalist design of the space denotes an air of Mexican modernism that’s unlike anything you’d find in the Bay Area.
Yet according to chef and co-owner Saqib Keval, a Northern California–raised son of Ethiopian and Kenyan immigrants of Indian descent, Oakland is central to the restaurant’s ethos…