When you’re at Seattle’s Masakan, you’re family

What's your go-to spot in the Seattle area? The place you depend on for a reliable lunch or the cafe with a perfect birthday vibe or even that deep cut right off the light rail that just turns the day around. On this edition of The Seattle Eats Menu, Emily Kim, co-founder of the Pastry Project, takes us to her favorite joint, Masakan.

On a recent episode of "Seattle Eats," a podcast about the Seattle food scene and the best things to eat in it, Kim talked about what makes it special.

For Emily Kim, the co-founder of The Pastry Project a free baking and pastry training program in Pioneer Square, nothing beats Masakan.

“ You're a part of the family when you're being served by them,” Kim said.

A mother-daughter duo is behind the cooking at Masakan, cooking up a rotating menu of homestyle Malay cuisine: stir-fried flat noodles, spicy sour fish stews, coconut milk rice served with sambal and studded with anchovies, flaky pastries filled with curried potatoes, tender bone-in chicken hooked up with assorted veggies.

And everything on the menu is exclusively halal.

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It’s the kind of food diners say can cure homesickness and satisfy big cravings for a little satay.

Safira Ezani and her mother, Masitah Hamzah, have been running Masakan since October 2020.

Masakan started as a pop-up, but Ezani and Hamzah have since expanded into full service catering. They have a range of clients, from community partners like Wasat, a non-profit in Seattle, to the Seahawks.

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Emily Kim will go anywhere in Seattle to have Masakan. From birthday parties to cooking classes, she’s always shown up to their meals ready to try something new.

“It feels really fun to have a place that you can go and discover new different cultural kinds of foods,” she said. “Surprisingly, I guess, in Ballard.”

You can find the Masakan booth at the Ballard Farmer’s Market on Sundays.

On a recent Sunday, a queue of patrons clung to the side of the booth waiting for two of Kim’s favorites: murtabak – a flatbread stuffed with beef, eggs, and caramelized onion that resembles a stuffed omelet – and trays of kuih, bite-sized desserts made with coconut and pandan.

Pandan is one of Kim’s favorite flavors. The bright green leaf has sweet, floral, almost vanilla-like qualities. Although it's popular throughout South Asia, Kim said it hasn’t caught on in the way its purple counterpart, ube, has. She said pandan might get there, but it's not there yet.

Kim can find her favorites at each iteration of Masakan. But her favorite way to experience Ezani and Hamzah’s food is at sit-down catered meals with a room full of strangers.

She said it’s like being with family, except you don’t actually know anybody.

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“I remember the feeling of being in a room and being served and spoken to by the owners that felt so much like I was just hanging out with friends and family in their home,” Kim said.

But how do Ezani and Hamzah create that feeling? The answer is in the familial quality of the meal.

Ezani relishes in being a go-to spot for people like Kim. “It feels like such a blessing and honor for people to enjoy what we’ve offered,” she said.

Running a small business, let alone a family business, is not easy. But when it comes to the food, it’s personal for Ezani. It’s the kind of food she would have with her own family every day.

“When I see customers coming back,” she said, “it almost feels like they’re just joining us for family dinner again.”

"Seattle Eats" is a podcast by KUOW about the Seattle food scene and the best things to eat in it. These episodes showcase interviews from critics, chefs, and others in the food industry about our region. You can join the conversation, too. What’s your go-to spot? Send us an email at seattleeats@kuow.org or leave us a voicemail at 206-543-851.