Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Nixta Taqueria's Sara Mardanbigi Makes Contact with the Motherland
Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation
Chai & Conversation
4.9 • 548 Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2023
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
Nixta Taqueria is an award winning taqueria in Austin coowned by today's Growing Up Irooni guest Sara Mardanbigi. She owns it together with her husband Edgar Rico, who she recently took on a month long trip to Iran. We talked about her upbringing in Arkansas, what led her to create such a unique business, and about her recent trip to Iran, amidst the women, life, freedom movement.
Related Links:
- Priya Krishna's NYT article about Sara and Nixta
- Follow Nixta on Instagram
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Learn Persian with Chaiang Conversation. |
| 0:02.5 | Growing up, Ironi interview with Sarah Madan Bighi, |
| 0:06.0 | owner of the award-winning Nikaikaikaa in Austin, Texas. Sarah Mardombagli. Thank you so much for talking with me today. |
| 0:33.1 | Thank you for having me in Leila, June. |
| 0:34.7 | Yeah, so Sarah is the co-owner with her husband of one of the most popular restaurants in Austin. It's called Nika. And if you haven't heard of it yet, you will. It's been in the top restaurants in the New York Times, right? And Amu Bernie, Bernie Sanders has been there. Anne Hathaway's been there. Basically any celebrity that comes to |
| 0:55.0 | Austin, which these days is a lot, will go to NICTA and they'll take a picture and talk about how |
| 0:59.8 | wonderful an experience they had there. And can you tell us just a little bit about what makes |
| 1:03.8 | Nika unique? So Nika is the love child of my husband and I, who are also business partners. |
| 1:11.1 | His family grew up in Mexico and mine in Iran. |
| 1:15.8 | So the restaurant is really representation of us growing up as first generation American. |
| 1:21.3 | So foundationally, we put a lot of love into the masa. |
| 1:25.3 | We get corn sourced from indigenous farmers outside of Waxaca. Over a 15-hour |
| 1:30.2 | period, we turn it from the kernel into mosa and to tortillas. And then that serves as a canvas for |
| 1:36.0 | everything else. So whatever goes on those tacos and toastadas, we just kind of base it on, |
| 1:41.3 | like, our childhood memories, things that we've learned growing up and cooking |
| 1:45.2 | at Brisbane as chef as whole life. So it's just a very welcoming space, unpretentious, just coming in, |
| 1:51.0 | getting some good food and yeah, meeting some new people. Definitely. And you also have a |
| 1:55.0 | Shol-Lez-Aid, which you wrote about for the New York Times. Can you tell us a little bit about that? |
| 1:59.2 | So it's mostly Mexican food. |
| 2:01.6 | And then you also have this chalise. So during the pandemic, we had to really pivot and think |
| 2:09.2 | about the options for dessert. At the time, we were only serving palettes, which are popsicles, |
| 2:14.2 | which don't really travel in transit that well. They'll get melted by the time you get home. |
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