Welcome to Maya’s Kitchen

A Community Kitchen Academy grad serves up curries and momos in the Queen City

Maya was working at an assisted living facility when she learned about the Community Kitchen Academy (CKA) program made possible by Vermont Foodbank supporters. “My husband kept telling me, ‘Maybe we should open our own restaurant,'” Maya said. “He encouraged me to go to the cooking class to learn some rules.”

It’s been just over a month since Maya’s Kitchen & Bar first opened its doors in Burlington, VT.

Maya co-owns the restaurant with her husband Suk. They emigrated to the U.S. 10 years ago and now call Vermont home. Maya was born in Bhutan, but grew up in a refugee camp in Jhapa, Nepal, where she and her family lived for 18 years. “It’s not easy, our parents didn’t have jobs,” Maya explains. “Sometimes we had food scarcity.”

At CKA, Maya learned how to transition from cooking at home to preparing food in a commercial kitchen. Now many years of hard work and saving money, plus support from their families in caring for the couple’s two young children, have culminated in Maya’s Kitchen & Bar.

By supporting job training and education programs like Community Kitchen Academy, you are helping create new possibilities and a better tomorrow for your Vermont neighbors.

 

You can support your neighbors in need by taking action to eliminate hunger and poverty here in Vermont. Click here to make your gift today: www.vtfoodbank.org/give.

This story was originally produced by our friends at the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf.