About the Event

Open Kitchens: Transforming Food Service through Community, Culture, and Ethical Leadership

We often ascribe the concept of “healthy” to food, but what do healthy foodways look like? On December 5, 2024, we hosted a conversation among three visionary chefs leading change in the food service industry through transparency, labor justice, and storytelling through food. Using food as a tool for both community and political engagement, these chefs are building new models of food service that prioritize the integrity of fresh ingredients in hospitals, and workers’ rights in restaurants. Through a spirit of ethical, cooperative leadership, this panel discusses how to activate simple yet radical approaches in the food industry and create menus inspired by place, migration, and community.

Chef Norma Listman Sanchez is a Mexico City-based artist, chef and restaurateur exploring the intersection of history, food, art and politics in her culinary craft. Her deep scholarship on Mexican gastronomy and its period traditions bring the reverence and perspective of an art historian into the practice of a working chef.

Norma’s mentorship of young female chefs is a living testimony to her commitment to bringing the feminist movements of the Global South to transform Mexico’s food systems.

In 2018, along with her husband, co-chef & co-owner Saqib Keval, Norma opened Masala y Maiz, a social justice-focused restaurant in Mexico City.

Chef Saqib Keval is a food justice organizer, chef, public speaker and restaurateur, who comes from the cultural and ancestral lineage of the South Asian diaspora from Kenya and Ethiopia. He is a California-born native who speaks five languages and grew up in a large immigrant family of deer hunters, educators, and activists. He founded the food-centered, political art project People’s Kitchen Collective to explore radical hospitality as a response to the urgent social issues of our time. He has lectured at conferences and universities worldwide on topics at the intersection of food systems, art and political movements.

In 2018 he opened Masala y Maiz, a social justice-focused restaurant in Mexico City along with his wife, co-chef & co-owner Norma Listman Sanchez.

Chef Santana Diaz is the Director of Culinary Operations and Innovation and Executive Chef for UC Davis Health. Seasonal. Local. Creative. These words fully define the passion and characteristics that guide Chef Diaz, whose vision has always been to bring a true farm-to-fork, restaurant-style culinary experience to all facets of every food venue that he has had the privilege to lead. Chef Diaz joined UC Davis Health in late 2017 after setting up and executing the Golden 1 Center food program with the most successful farm-to-fork production in sports. His drive to create an impactful program via health care intrigued him and offered him more opportunities to work with the local farmer and rancher community. Five years later, Diaz oversees one of the largest production kitchens in the region – serving more than 6,500 meals a day – and has transformed standard hospital food into sustainable, healthy eating for patients, employees, and the shared community. His experience with fine-dining restaurants and hotel management in the California Bay Area, coupled with large-volume sports and entertainment work, have yielded Diaz the opportunity to bring the high-volume “eats” to a healthier platform while not losing the most important aspect of the meals: taste.

Moderator Audrey Russek is the Curator, Food and Wine at the UC Davis Library. She leads the library’s strategic initiatives around distinctive collections in food, wine, and other beverages. She is active in collection development and management, research services, and outreach to support research, instruction, and public engagement around the science of food and wine and their role in culture. An interdisciplinarian at heart, Dr. Russek holds a PhD in American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently completing a book manuscript, Performing Culinary Citizenship: The Regulation of Restaurants in Modern America. She serves on the Editorial Collective for the journal Global Food History.