Mursal Saiq
Mursal Saiq
Mursal Saiq is rightly considered by those in the know as one of London’s most important chefs, and yet for many her work flies under the radar. From her early days growing up in Afghanistan, to India and London, Mursal’s journey to becoming a leader in barbecue cookery while actively promoting inclusion in the way we eat is nothing short of remarkable.
Afghanistan to Mumbai, Mumbai to London
Early memories of food can often be the catalyst for a life in kitchens. Helping parents bake cakes or prepare dinners is the starting point for many chefs, but for Mursal Saiq, things were a little different. Growing up under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, Mursal blocked out much of the trauma of those early years.
One food memory that lingers is eating fresh, juicy peaches with her family. But, with a father on active duty during the Afghan Civil War of the early nineties, her more prominent memories are less involved with food, and more with exile.
‘I’m writing a book’ Saiq begins, ‘and it’ll open with this recurring line I’ve used so many times: “I was born in the 1990s civil war, in Kabul, Afghanistan”. The plan was for us to leave when I was five or six. We hoped to “pop to India” and just wait out the war. We ended up in Mumbai – then called Bombay – with my uncle who was in Bollywood and ended up living there for a few years.’
India became a source of creative inspiration, the rich food and spices of the country playing a prominent role in developing Saiq’s awareness of food. ‘So many of my flavour profiles come from India. I look now at things like saag aloo, cardamom sugar, kulfi, these sweets that I grew up with – it’s a huge part of me and it’s now a huge part of what we do at Cafe 1001.’
Saiq has become embedded in east London. Cafe 1001 is a cool Shoreditch hangout, a cafe in the morning and restaurant with vinyls spinning in the evening. As a creative consultant she writes menus for a number of restaurants, cafes and businesses around Brick Lane, Shoreditch and the Truman Brewery, all with inclusivity at their heart.
London, Street Feast and the makings of a chef
While Saiq is now a fixture in the east London scene, arriving in the UK aged just seven, Saiq and her mother were separated from her father and sisters. ‘I remember I was able to enter the UK and they weren’t. It was the last I saw of them for many years, literally going through the British border and waiving them goodbye’.
Despite the pain of family separation, a young Saiq was enamoured with the welcome her and her mother received to the UK. ‘It was as if the Queen herself had opened up this home for us, it was quite magical. The Home Office threw a welcome party for refugees and asylum seekers. I call myself “British Afghan” because this country took me in. If a nation gives respect and welcome to an individual, then that person can grow and flourish. I’m proof.’
London wasn’t an easy place though. In north London, while the diaspora communities were close knit, school was another story. ‘When I was younger everyone had sandwiches for packed lunch and I would have a home-cooked curry. [Looking back] I was really growing up between two worlds and I remember, all I ever wanted were those little chocolate animal biscuits. Every blonde hair, blue eyed girl would have all these things and I’d be the girl with the curry.’
Speaking to Mursal, it’s apparent that an interest in food had been sewn across multiple countries over her childhood. Returning to Afghanistan for holidays she recalls the hawkers who’d sell fruit and veg via a cart in the neighbourhoods and the armies of women (‘it was always the young women’) who’d wake up early to prepare breakfast for the families. ‘There’s just something about Afghanistan food and food culture that’s so deep seated in me’.
But it was in London and finding work in the earliest days of Street Feast that the idea of food as a career really started to take hold. After studying history and political philosophy at Goldsmiths and UCL, Mursal Saiq went on to work at the British Museum as an archivist during the day, and got a job at the then burgeoning Street Feast in the evenings and weekends.
Learning the trade from Jonathan Downey of Street Feast and David Carter of Smokestak gave Saiq her grounding in barbecue cookery, but also in what it takes to be an operator, the attention to detail and the love of food. But there was this persistent niggle: ‘None of my family and friends could eat it.’
‘We’d launched in the heart of where I went to school – Clapton Girls – and I invited my friends to Street Feast just as we started doing food. My friends and family got in and they all wanted Smokestak, but nothing was halal, so they couldn’t eat anything. This was Hackney, and we’re all from Hackney, but my friends couldn’t access it.’
The start of Cue Point
After a lot of work, early versions of Cue Point started to emerge. Saiq recalls ‘Originally we wanted to do all of this in Bologna, Italy. They have this amazing [food] scene and so we found this old property, we all moved to Bologna and tried to make it work. Then these old men just kept visiting us and eating with us, they were so nice but after a while they started asking us for money. They were so nice about it, but they were all Mafia, and you had to pay them, the charming bastards. We realised that it wasn’t going to work in Italy and so we came back to London.’
Returning to the UK and with the help of David Carter, Saiq was able to get a smoker working, made up from old parts. Cue Point was born and, whether she is aware of it or not, Mursal herself became a pioneer. Hers was the first halal and kosher smoker in London, likely in the whole UK, and Saiq’s unwavering spirit had, somewhat by accident, begun to create a community.
‘We found that Cue Point started to transform the people I met. It’s a space for people like me who don’t fully belong here, or fully belong there, so where do we go? Cue Point. We started to attract everyone that felt between two places. Half Egyptian, half American, second generation immigrants, third generation immigrants, they all came here. The community elders in Hackney love us because we speak a certain way that they were never able to when they grew up.
Mursal sees that being fully accessible and fully inclusive is the best way to bring people together. Saiq obsesses over creating a space where fun, frank and perhaps even challenging conversations can be had. ‘It means that “Sarah” and “Layla” can sit down together in the same restaurant and have a conversation about their differences, because how else do you do that if you’re never in the same space?’
The future, and growing the message of inclusivity
Mursal’s journey is one of defiance, knowledge and the unexpected. Saiq recalls senior figures in the food world actively telling her to ‘stop trying to mix race and heritage with food’. Yet Cue Point, and in fact all of Saiq’s consultancy work across venues in east London, feel deeply personal and inexorably linked to her story. Put simply, ‘food, people and diversity go together whether you like it or not.’ Her role is now evolving to spread the message beyond the confines of east London.
‘I go to Marlow and St Albans and go on stage and give everyone halal food. In these spaces you have these people who perhaps once were prejudiced and you literally break bread with people and you realise all of those things are constructs. How do we break past that? It’s with compassion, and food.’
Mursal is writing a book to further break down these constructs, and share not only her own story but the legacy of recipes and stories which are being wiped out from Afghanistan right now.
‘With everything going on in Afghanistan, I feel this sense of urgency to get my mother's and father's stories and recipes out somewhere in the world. It’ll be this plethora of recipes I never want to be lost, [combined with] history and my story. As my identity moves, the book moves on. I lived on a fishing trawler in Portsmouth, I lived with English circus “showman” families when I ran away who called me Roger because they couldn’t pronounce my name. I lived in Italy, Birmingham, India, Hackney and Afghanistan and the book follows it all. Ultimately, I want people to understand that it’s ok to be from two or more places – you can still find a home.’
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