A short list of deliberate kitchens.
We do not list everyone. Each maker on Zayna is someone we have eaten with, asked questions of, and waited patiently for. Here are their portraits.
Dar Fatima
A kitchen kept by Fatima Belkacem · London
Fatima learned to fold makroud at her grandmother Yamina's kitchen table in the lower Casbah, between the Friday market and the courtyard fountain. Sixty years later, she still folds them the same way — by feel, never by clock — in an atelier of five women on rue Larbi Ben M'hidi.
Maison Zineb
A kitchen kept by Zineb Bouhired · Manchester
Maison Zineb sits on the cliff edge of Constantine, in a stone house with a kitchen older than the building above it. Zineb's father, Sidi Ahmed, opened the bakery in 1968. He taught her that real baklava needs forty layers of phyllo and the patience of a slow Friday afternoon.
Atelier Karim
A kitchen kept by Karim Aït-Mohand · Birmingham
Karim left London — and a quiet career in architecture — to come home to his grandfather's olive grove in the Soummam valley. He found the stone mill still standing, the trees still bearing fruit, and a village quietly hoping someone would press oil there again.
Halawiyat Meriem
A kitchen kept by Meriem Aïssaoui · Leeds
Meriem cooks every order herself, in a small kitchen with a window onto Béjaïa harbour. She started by feeding her neighbours; now she feeds families in five countries, but she still answers the door, still tastes every pot.
Do you keep a small kitchen worth a portrait?
We accept a handful of new makers each season. If your kitchen has a story, we would love to listen.
Tell us about your kitchen