Dame Kara Martin
Profile by Judith H. Dern
Craving a global food experience? You don’t need a passport to savor the flavors and tastes served in simmering dishes from the Congo to Somalia, Nigeria and Kenya, from Cambodia to Argentina at Spice Bridge in Tukwila Village–just south in Seattle’s backyard. In the thick of these global culinary adventures is Dame Kara Martin, a member of Les Dames Seattle since 2020.
As program director, she manages the flow and staffing rotations for the four Spice Bridge retail stalls at Spice Bridge and coordinates participants’ use of the onsite commercial kitchen along with classes in business management skills, food safety, assessing food costs, permits and licensing requirements.
The newly built sunlit and air-conditioned food hall, which opened in October 2020, is operated by the nonprofit Global to Local organization based in SeaTac and is the base of its Food Innovation Network (FIN) program. This visionary program started in 2010 to provide subsidized space and training to help Immigrant entrepreneurs–exclusively women–test their food business concepts. The concept builds on food as a connection, a catalyst for creating community and building food security. At Spice Bridge, take-away meals along with nearby outdoor seating in Tukwila Village have worked well as a community hub for cooks and diners during the past year’s Covid-19 restrictions. The Tukwila Village Farmers’ Market on Wednesday afternoons selling produce grown by refugees and immigrants adds to the location’s role as a community food resource.
Kara’s path to crucial community culinary efforts started when she worked in food bank systems, learning about the inequities and poverty of food access leading to more poverty. During this period, she read Sweet Charity (1998) by Janet Poppendieck, which shifted her view of food systems fostered from growing up in the agricultural heartland of Iowa and Colorado. Her graduate degree from the University of Washington in urban planning focused on food planning systems and how food reaches people. Spurred by her work and advisory participation for a half dozen cities through Public Health Seattle and King County (PHSKC) contracts, she has assessed and advised local governments regarding the impact of food access on neighborhoods. In 2017, she started as a consultant for FIN for its pilot project and says, “I fell in love with the work and the people and moved into the program director role.”
Building the two-year program was about more than having an available kitchen, since it took a while to build the Spice Bridge facility. It was about support and training, testing a business concept. Currently there are 13 businesses representing 17 individuals.
“We work with participants six to 12 months before they get into the kitchen, and they first must complete a 12-week business training course,” Kara says. “We also wanted to be culturally sensitive to food traditions and not Americanize the recipes. Dishes with super spicy sauces can have the sauce served on the side.” Critical to the incubator concept, the food wasn’t to be seen as “cheap” because it was indigenous or prepared by immigrants, along the lines of comparing haute cuisine French vs. African or Asian. “Their amazing food is art,” notes Kara, “and we didn’t want to compromise this for a second.”
Bridging language barriers with Instagram has worked well, along with Zoom orientation sessions. Some participants pursue catering, while others produce packaged goods. The four kiosks in the food hall are each shared by two businesses, in rotating sequence Tuesday through Saturday, and with shorter hours on Sunday. The food hall allows connecting with vendors and a valuable opportunity to build community.
The super exciting news: The first participants of the Food Innovation Network are graduating this June! They will move from the Spice Bridge space and find new community paths for their businesses. Tip: Look for Seatango in Seattle’s Lake City neighborhood offering a delicious selection of authentic dishes from Argentina in its new brick and mortar location.
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