Mera Kitchen’s new series serves up food as memory, migration, and inheritance

At Mera Kitchen Collective, food has always been more than something to eat. It is memory, migration, and an inheritance; a chronicle of the places that people have left and the loved ones, places, and stories they carry with them. 

Beginning this spring, Mera’s Story-Worthy Food Series invited its team members to revisit those chronicles and share them with Baltimore. One week a month, a rotating series described by Mera as a “curated menu featuring dishes that make us,” allows team members to tell the stories of how they arrived in the city, their relationships to their home and heritage, and how food has shaped their identities. 

For Vilma Molina, who kickstarted the series in March from the 24th to the 28th, the act of sharing was deeply personal. As a Baltimore Beat photographer documented her dishes, Molina stood near, hands pressed to her heart, before pulling out her phone to capture the moment herself and send it to family and friends. Seeing her food presented in this way, she said, was “beyond my dreams.”

Molina learned to cook by watching her mother in El Salvador. When she moved to Belize to escape the civil war in her late teens, her style of cooking evolved through the introduction to new ingredients and traditions. More than three decades later, after arriving in Baltimore and joining Mera in June 2025, she began sharing those flavors first with her daughters and husband, and then with her coworkers. Though she typically works front of house, cooking became a way for her to connect with her coworkers, bringing in pupusas for staff and inviting them into her world with a simple question: “Do you want to try something different today?”

“They have the door open to anyone who wants to work or create here,” Molina said of Mera. 

Her menu reflects that journey from El Salvador to Belize to Baltimore. We started with the lamb pupusa, a Salvadorian staple with Mera’s Mediterranean influence, its warm masa envelope stuffed with house-made lamb chorizo, beans, and cheese, balanced by a bright cilantro-citrus slaw. The dish carried not just flavor, but memories as well; Molina remembers hearing the Salvadorian song “A Mi Me Gustan Las Pupusas” everywhere during her childhood. 

Her Pastelitos de Papas, inspired by after-school walks and street vendors, were a flaky, crisp pastry stuffed with warmly spiced potatoes, while the shrimp and banana boat sandwich was paired with a jalapeño mayo and sweet bananas on traditional-style Salvadorian bread, creating an unexpectedly balanced bite. Her Belizean garnaches con pollo, a crispy tortilla topped with tender pulled chicken, a tangy salad, and beans simmered in onions, garlic, peppers, and bay leaves, spans the connection between her Salvadorian roots and the life she built in Belize. 

Even the beverages held memories of her childhood. Her strawberry-chia agua fresca reimagines a Belizean staple with house-made strawberry syrup (instead of its usual Kool-Aid), while her horchata de morro, a Salvadorian variation made from morro seeds, peanuts, sesame, cocoa, pumpkin seeds, and milk, pays tribute to the morro trees that grew outside her childhood home. 

“It is important for me that people like the food,” Molina said, “I put my love, my memory, my everything in my food.” 

For Anysa Saleh, whose menu followed in April from the 21st to the 25th, food is inseparable from art. 

Saleh, a Yemeni American artist and former Mera artist-in-residence, was already familiar with Mera’s long-standing tradition of supporting local artists and creators. During her residency, she created a series of self-portraits exploring loneliness, estrangement, and longing by embodying different family members within a single frame. The work revisited memories of Ramadan and examines the emotional distance created by generational divides and the ongoing war in Yemen. 

Having learned to cook at the age of 10 from her mother, aunts, and older sisters, Saleh grew up in California’s Central Valley before moving to Yemen with her family for two years. That period of time submerged her in the rhythms of Yemeni cooking and family life. These experiences cooking and engaging with a larger extended family shape both her artwork and her menu options. 

New to the Mera team, Saleh saw the Story-Worthy Food series as an opportunity to merge her love of cooking and an expansion of her artistic prowess. 

I started with her samboosa Yemenia: a delicate, flaky pastry filled with cumin and coriander-spiced beef, brightened by green chillies and scallions, served with an avocado sa7waq, a spicy Yemeni green sauce with a Californian twist. It was a fitting symbol of Saleh’s layered identity rooted in Yemen and the Central Valley. 

The lamb mandi, which she described on the menu as “a labor of love and a gesture of care for guests,” was fragrant, tender lamb sat over fluffy rice with roasted vegetables, raisins adding moments of sweetness that deepened the warmth and complexity of the dish. 

For beverages, I had the 3seer 3mb papaya, a fresh papaya puree swirled with Vimto. A beloved Ramadan drink throughout the Middle East and Muslim diaspora, its berry-rich sweetness grounded the meal. 

Dessert was bint al-sa7n, Yemen’s traditional honey cake made with laminated dough, ghee, and nigella seeds, was delicate, rich, and sweet. 

“This menu is a love letter to my Yemeni heritage,” Saleh said, “sharing the dishes I grew up with in a city that gave me a place to belong.”

Though Molina and Saleh came from different histories, their Story-Worthy menus reveal the same truth: food is a way to strengthen one’s identity and help maintain a connection to their homelands. It can preserve memories across borders, honor family near and far, and create connections in new places. At Mera Kitchen, these histories are not simply flattened but are treated as deeply personal narratives that are worth preservation and care. 

What drew me to the Story-Worthy Series was the way that Mera asked its diners to engage with the meals and menus by providing context to each dish. Within each menu, there are stories, memories, and intimate recollections of their migration journey, detailing how it shaped them, as well as their affection for specific dishes. From Molina’s reflections on hearing “A Mi Me Gustan Las Pupusas” throughout her childhood, or Saleh’s explanation of learning how to fold samboosas from her eldest sister, it made the experience of eating more personal. The dishes function not only as menu items but also as conversation starters, a window to a memory, a way to dig deeper into one’s story. 

In the introductory text of the menus, Mera describes food as “a living map of human connection.” Another line asks, “Does a conversation change what we eat? Or does what we eat change the conversation?” That question, to me, centers the whole project. The series is not only about showcasing recipes; it is about tracing how identity evolves through movement and how food becomes one of the few things capable of carrying a sense of home, no matter where a person is. 

I keep thinking about Vilma standing near her dishes while a Beat photographer was taking photos, hands to her chest, before she excitedly sent the pictures of that moment to her loved ones. There was pride, and also relief, that the food and memories she carried internally were being seen and valued publicly. 

Anysa’s menu, like her artwork, circles back on themes of longing, distance, and belonging. Through this series, she was able to translate those emotions into something tangible. Guests who may have never experienced Yemeni, Salvadorian, or Belizean food were suddenly able to participate in these stories shaped by migration, family, resilience, and love.

That level of emotional openness and community is only possible due to Mera’s broader culture. The restaurant has long positioned itself as more than a dining space. It is a collaborative environment built around artists, immigrants, refugees, and cultural exchange. Even the wording on the menu reflects Mera’s ethos: “The series is an opportunity for each team member to share, in the form of a menu, the pieces from their life and journey that have shaped them and brought them to Baltimore.” In Vilma’s menu, before the food items, the featured dishes are described as “the places she has lived, and the memories she carries with her. This menu is curated from her food map of memories.” The language centers the team members, the people, first, food second. 

What emerges from the Story-Worthy Food Series is a reminder that restaurants can preserve culture in ways that are alive. The meals are not static artifacts or social media trends that come and go, chasing a fad. They evolve alongside the people who are cooking them. Molina’s Salvadorian dishes carry Belizean influences. Saleh’s Yemeni recipes hold pieces of California. Mera’s own Mediterranean influence is sprinkled throughout both menus. Together, those intersections reflect Baltimore as a whole. A city continually shaped by grit, determination, and care. 

By the end of both meals, what stayed with me most was not a particular flavor or dish, but the feeling that each dish offered an invitation into someone else’s world. At Mera, culture is not just decoration or a “vibe.” Stories of the people who work and make it what it is are not confined to the kitchen. They are central to it. Shared with strangers who are willing to listen. One meal at a time, the restaurant turns food into testimony, proof that memory is resilient and that belonging sometimes comes with being invited to someone’s table.