Meet Mab

Mahboubeh (Mab) was born and raised in Khorramshahr, a city with a large Arab population in southern Iran. Her father owned a restaurant, a grocery store, and a tea importing company, and he taught her about picking the best ingredients for every recipe. Her mother taught her how to cook, often making dishes from the Azeri region of northern Iran, where both of Mab’s parents grew up. 

When cooking with her family, Mab learned to go “low and slow” to bring out the incredible flavors and smells of the food that would transport them back to Azeri. For Mab, cooking is the intersection between culture, memory, medicine, nature, and art. This intersectional approach to cooking is clear in the delicious, stunning, and meaningful dishes she teaches in her League of Kitchens workshops. 

Mab is both a documentary filmmaker and an activist—involved in the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s, she was later persecuted by the Islamic Republic as a vocal advocate for women’s rights. After being imprisoned three times during the 2000s for organizing peaceful protests, she fled Iran and moved to New York City as a political refugee. She currently lives in San Francisco and, alongside her work as a multimedia journalist, teaches and researches the integration of cooking and mindfulness.

Mab and her incredible food have been featured in New York Magazine (Grubstreet), Food & Wine, Slow Food USA, Wall Street Journal, Saveur, Good Food Podcast, Keep Calm and Cook On with Julia Turshen, and other publications.