If you’ve spotted delicate pleated dumplings and saffron-tinted rice dishes lighting up your feed lately, there’s a good chance they came from Engela Zalmy, the chef behind MANTU MAMA MAKES. Zalmy grew up in a large Afghan family where cooking was communal and celebratory, and she started sharing that food story in 2017 while studying public health at the University of Maryland. “Cooking brought me back to my roots,” she says of those first posts. During the pandemic, she leaned in—documenting recipes, traditions, and the regional nuance of a cuisine many Phil-adelphians rarely encounter.
Zalmy identifies her food as Persian, using the term in its historic, cultural sense that stretches beyond Iran to include Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The namesake mantu are delicate dumplings filled with lamb topped spoonfuls of tangy kashk (yogurt) and a warm tomato-lentil sauce. Another crowd favorite is pulao (pilaf): long-grain rice scented with fried onions and herbs, sometimes studded with tender meat. It’s comfort food, yes, and also a lesson in migration and memory.
Her popular pop-ups began as a test. “People kept asking if I’d make Persian food here,” Zalmy says. Her latest sold-out event proved the point: Guests told her how little Persian representation they’d found in the city and how hungry they were for it. Since then, she’s collaborated with traveling supper clubs and taken on private cheffing while sketching the next phase: a ticketed supper club that moves through restaurants and intimate spaces, giving diners a seated, multi-course experience of Afghan Persian flavors.
For Zalmy, the project is culinary and cultural. She’s frank about how headlines have shaped perceptions of the region she calls home. Food, she believes, can offer a more complete story. It’s one rooted in hospitality, history, and joy. It’s also personal: With family displaced and elders far away, cooking is how she stays connected. Re-creating recipes passed from great-grandmother to grandmother to mother, she says, is a way to keep those voices at the table.
While a website is in the works, the best way to keep up with Mantu Mama Makes is on Instagram, where she announces her pop-ups and collaborations.
FIND MORE ON INSTAGRAM @THEMANTUMAMA.
