Mahfam Moeeni-Alacron, Chef and Co-owner of Mingle + Graze, Is Now a Dame d’Escoffier

It’s within the quiet hours between lunch and dinner that we get to spend a while with Mahfam Moeeni-Alacron, the Persian chef and co-owner of Mingle + Graze at 48 South San Marcos Place in downtown Chandler.

Entrance-of-house is gradual, with a pair on the patio and a lady eating inside, however the back-of-house is busy prepping. Moeeni-Alacron sits close to a laptop computer and a stack of papers that relaxation on a desk close to the register. If she weren’t being interviewed, one will get the sense she’d assist washing dishes or putting orders.

“I do it with pleasure,” she says of her work across the kitchen. Even with a masks on, her smile exhibits in her eyes. It is the angle that landed her a nomination and acceptance in April into the Phoenix Chapter of the Les Dames d’Escoffier, an expert society of girls leaders within the fields of meals, beverage, and hospitality.

Moeeni-Alacron, a founding member of Cherry Bombe (a biannual journal and weekly podcast all concerning the feminine leaders of meals), met Dame Emma Zimmerman, the co-owner of Hayden Flour Mills, on the Cherry Bombe Radio Tour in June 2019. They spent extra time collectively after they met once more on the James Beard Basis’s “Proudly owning It” occasion. Impressed by Moeeni-Alacron’s work, Zimmerman nominated her for the Les Dames d’Escoffier on March 10, 2021.

“It meant the world to me that she considered me, a real honor,” Moeeni-Alacron says.

However the nomination was step one. She needed to submit her resume and undergo a vetting course of. She formally turned a Dame on April 5. To Moeeni-Alacron, being a Dame means she could have extra alternatives to attach with a neighborhood of like-minded ladies within the meals world.

The Mingle + Graze cheese case.

Bahar Anooshahr

Nevertheless it was no easy highway. Rising up in Jonesboro, Arkansas, she used to cover her Persian background.

Now, “I need to share my heritage,” she says. And she or he does with elements like barberries, pistachios, turmeric, cardamom, and figs interspersed in her recipes.

You stroll the size of her small store and restaurant to get to the cheese and dessert fridge. On the counter amid the jam jars and cracker containers sits a photograph of a spice store in a Persian bazaar. Colourful mounds of spices are displayed in metallic bowls in a number of rows.

Though the restaurant opens at 11 a.m., her husband and enterprise accomplice, Cristobal Alacron, arrives at 8 a.m., adopted by Moeeni-Alacron round 9 a.m. after dropping the children off in school. They work on their catering, prep checklist, and wholesale orders for different eating places (Sleepy Whale, Desert Monk Brewery, and Palette Collective Espresso & Co). She cooks throughout the rush, then sits at one of many tables along with her laptop computer answering emails or conducting conferences.

As we communicate, Alacron takes a cellphone order. They’ve 4 part-time employees members as effectively. As we speak, three work on making containers of cheese. They’re all educated on every little thing cheese from style to wrapping to storing.

All this, Moeeni-Alacron says, is precisely what she wished to do all her life.

“I all the time cherished cooking with my mother. After we hosted events, I’d skip hanging out with children my age to be within the kitchen with mother. You recognize the Persian tradition and the love of internet hosting.”

It took her till her junior yr in faculty to appreciate she might make a profession of it. The proprietor of the cafe the place she labored talked about culinary faculty. As soon as she heard about it, she gave her mother and father a presentation about why she ought to change her main from chemistry (pre-pharmacy).

Her Iranian mother and father tried to barter along with her, however her thoughts was made up.

Moeeni-Alacron returned to Arizona (her birthplace) in 2005 to attend Arizona Culinary Institute with the objective of opening a restaurant.

For 15 years Moeeni-Alacron and her husband labored food and drinks gigs across the Valley. Her last place was as a beer and wine purchaser and head chef for Entire Meals’ advertising occasions. There she discovered about retail, wine, craft beer, and actually good cheeses.

Lastly, she felt prepared to begin a small enterprise promoting marinated olives, which she was identified for on the farmers’ market known as Mahfam Artisanal Handcrafted Foods. She bought olives and obtained catering orders. This was along with working full-time, elevating her son (5), and being pregnant along with her daughter.

“I needed to make sacrifices,” says Moeeni-Alacron. “I missed lots of my son’s video games and performances.”

Grazing Desk

Mingle + Graze

In 2017, after six years at Entire Meals, she determined to depart and focus totally on her enterprise — a tough resolution, since they trusted two incomes to assist their household.

“We needed to price range and reduce on a whole lot of our desires,” says Moeeni-Alacron. This went on till solely not too long ago. The couple labored from a industrial kitchen till 2019 when she noticed the present house in downtown Chandler.

Mingle + Graze opened later that yr.

She determined to commit and added retail and a small menu. Desserts come from native bakeries. Then got here the actually scary resolution. To run the shop successfully, Alacron, a supervisor on the Gilbert and Camelback Street places of Snooze, must stop his job. They reduce to the naked minimal and paid the mortgage, utilities, and meals. The remaining went into the enterprise.

“You recognize what, although? We had a imaginative and prescient, and zig-zagged to get there, however collectively we did it,” says Moeeni-Alacron. “And day by day we attempt to get higher.”

Via phrase of mouth solely, Mingle + Graze doubled its gross sales in a yr, projecting a 200 p.c enhance in its 2020 income. Then got here COVID. The purchasers began canceling occasions. They pivoted to consolation meals. It was not about revenue however merely gross sales, an efficient technique. Fortunately, they didn’t miss a month of lease or have to put off employees.

Now, Mingle + Graze presents an expanded menu of cheeses and sandwiches. Some objects are impressed by the couple’s Persian backgrounds, however they hold issues easy, a carryover from the times after they had a strict price range.

“When you may have a enterprise, you’ll be able to’t be flashy,” she says. She holds her palm up, gesturing towards the restaurant surrounding her. “That is my flash.”