74
The crowd will include a cadre of the East Bay’s most
talented makers, all Javeri Kadri’s closest friends and sup-
porters, including chef Preeti Mistry, who helped her set up
early meetings to learn about distribution; designer Sophie
Peoples, who designed all the packaging and branding;
and chef Dominica Rice-Cisneros, who gave Javeri Kadri a
job at her restaurant, Cosecha, and became Diaspora Co.’s
first wholesale account. Javeri Kadri’s earliest advisors and
promoters—Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik and Jocelyn Jackson of
People’s Kitchen Collective, Stephen Satterfield of Whetstone
magazine, Aileen Suzara of the Filipino pop-up Sariwa, and
artist Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo—are all joining in, along
with Javeri Kadri’s aunt, Tia Kadri, and her family, who took
Javeri Kadri in when she first moved to the Bay Area.
“When I started Diaspora, I knew that I was going to need
a lot of help,” says Javeri Kadri, who is 25 years old. “I knew I
had to find people who knew more than me. And the people
here today were willing to go above and beyond. They kept
telling me I was working on something important, even when
I didn’t necessarily feel that way.”
The long backyard tables are ready for the platters of
kebabs and yogurt, turmeric-brightened rice and cauli-
flower, and fish that’s painted with spicy green chutney.
They’re dishes that speak to Javeri Kadri’s past, and she’s
excited to serve them in celebration of the company she’s
building. “We’re trying to give detail and color and context
to origins,” Javeri Kadri says as she wraps the fish into parch-
ment packages, recalling family trips to the fish market at
Mumbai’s Sassoon Docks.
Javeri Kadri heats up a pan for the kebabs, laughing with
Jackson, who showed up early to help. While Jackson folds
turmeric into a semolina-tahini batter for a dessert, Rice-
Cisneros stirs a pitcher of mango-turmeric agua fresca and
samples a cupful. “Compared to the turmeric you buy every-
where else, it’s day and night,” she says.
“Sana goes to the source and shares a fuller story, too,”
adds Jackson, “drawing our attention to this specific person
Sana Javeri Kadri’s hands are stained gold;
she’s been stuffing turmeric-spiced lamb
patties with herbs all morning. The Gujarati
Muslim side of her family has served this
dish at parties for four generations; here
in Oakland, California, guests are on their
way to celebrate the first anniversary of her
direct-trade spice company, Diaspora Co.
growing this specific strain of turmeric.”
Javeri Kadri was working in marketing in 2016
when she came across a surprising Google report
that listed turmeric as a top trending search term.
Shortly after, she encountered her first turmeric
latte at a nearby tea shop. It was bitter, over-
dosed with turmeric and lacking other spices
for balance.
Javeri Kadri, who grew up in Mumbai and
moved to California for college, had never con-
sidered turmeric out of context before: “For a
long time, turmeric was kind of invisible to me
because it was woven into every part of my child-
hood and, I think, life in India.” It was just one of
several spices that always made its way into the
cooking pot. “I didn’t understand turmeric as
something isolated for its properties,” she says, so
it was unsettling to see stores hawking turmeric
capsules and bloggers swallowing full teaspoons
of the powder.
And in the age of single-origin coffee and bean-
to-bar chocolate, no one seemed to know where
all this yellow stuff came from. Even in the Bay
Area, where attention is lavished on the prov-
enance of every peach, the purveyors she asked
could only point to the Indian importer’s name
on the label. “The spice industry is where coffee
was 10 years ago, or where chocolate was 5 years
ago,” explains Javeri Kadri. “Spices can change
hands—and increase in price—10 times before they
get to the importer.” And then they often dry out
in a warehouse for years.
So Javeri Kadri quit her job and booked a
flight. After a series of disappointing farm vis-
its and unreturned phone calls, she showed up
unannounced at the Indian Institute of Spices
Research in Kerala, where scientists worked to
identify heirloom varieties of turmeric. Though
a few farmers planted these strains, none had
connected with an importer interested in a single-
varietal product. “When you’re mixing all the
different strains together—which everyone was
doing—the flavor and color just isn’t as good,” says
Javeri Kadri. A tour of the institute’s test fields
made one thing very clear to her: “I wanted one
varietal, and I wanted to understand the flavors
of that varietal.”
One of the scientists introduced Javeri Kadri to
Prabhu Kasaraneni—“another young fanatic who
wasn’t going to leave them alone,” Javeri Kadri
jokes—who grew a nearly red, chubby-fingered
Marigolds are a symbol of celebration in India, hung outside the home during
festivals and birthday parties. They’re also planted in the turmeric fields as a
traditional pest-control method, and when the marigolds bloom, says Javeri
Kadri, it’s a sign that the turmeric is ready for harvest. She celebrated the
plants’ interconnectivity with a floral display at Diaspora Co.’s anniversary.
