Ma Khin Café: Decolonial and diverse

Decolonial.- Ma Khin Café opens it’s doors to everyone to everyone. It couldn’t be any other way. Ma Khin was born at the end of the nineteenth century, daughter of a Chinese trader and a Mon woman, (the Mon are just one of the over one hundred ethnic groups in present-day Myanmar). When her father died she had to contribute to the family income, rolling and selling cheroots in the market in her hometown of Moulmein. This is where she met and fell in love with one of her customers, Sir William Carr, a young civil servant from the north of England, recently arrived in the country as a judge for the British colonial administration of what was then British India (Burma had the status of a province).

The couple were to spend fifty years of their lives together and their story survived wars, revolutions and the end of the British Empire. Yet it was by no means an easy relationship. Mixed marriages were viewed with hostility both by the British governors, suspicious of any intimacy with the ‘natives’, as well as by the Burmese themselves, convinced that getting involved with the colonialists could only end in abandonment and shame.

I find it shocking that with the passing of the years and indeed the centuries we have still not managed to overcome these prejudices, this fear of the Other. Although we are different by nature, very often our differences are perceived as a threat instead of a strength, diversity that strengthens and contributes to our evolution as a society.

The evolution of food and the Decolonial philosophy of Ma Khin Café

Food and the way we eat has changed so much in Spain over the three decades I have been living in the country. My first restaurant, Seu Xerea, was a pioneer in offering fusion food. It’s possible that that concept, novel back in the nineties, would not have made such a mark in today’s Valencia. Diversity is now the norm in a country whose gastronomic horizons have opened up no end.

And that is the path Ma Khin Café wishes to follow with its Decolonial Food philosophy. We want to welcome the diversity of our staff, customers and suppliers just as we welcome the diversity of the gastronomic traditions that have contributed so much to the evolution of our restaurant.