A small micro creamery owned and run by couple Cedric Al Kazzi and Ross Hatton, Mishmish has been delighting the senses of Charles Village through regular pop-ups in the surrounding area, primarily near coffee shop Bird in Hand.
The News-Letter: Can you introduce yourself and share what you did before starting Mishmish?
Cedric Al Kazzi: My name is Cedric, and I am half of Mishmish, so I’m the first mish of Mishmish. I am a full time architect. I moved from Beirut, Lebanon to the U.S. for graduate school and then moved to Baltimore for work for the past 15 years.
Ross Hatton: I guess I'm the other half of Mishmish! I'm Ross Hatton, and I do full-time healthy policy research. I moved to Baltimore to get my PhD at Hopkins, and I currently study and research food policy, so food is very close to home for me. Prior to public health, I actually was in the food industry. I worked in fine dining for several years. Later on, I studied and later worked at the Culinary Institute of America, and then I worked at a couple other businesses and outlets, eventually finding my way to public health and food policy.
N-L: Why did you start a brand like Mishmish? What was the timeline from getting the idea for having your own brand to actually, like, starting to do pop ups?
CK: Mishmish stems out of our interest in creating an experience for everyone. We love to see people's faces light up! That experience starts from anything — seeing our branding to seeing the name, and then seeing our packaging with the washi tapes with the surprise of seeing the spoon underneath it. All of these design thoughts that we think of are just us hosting [customers]. We've always been hosting people at home; we love to have our doors open. This is the first time we are translating that small experience that we have at home.
RH: I had this background in fine dining, and I've always loved making desserts. One of Cedric's favorite desserts is an ice cream sandwich, and I had said for years that making them is something I wanted to do more of. When I was doing my PhD at Hopkins, I would walk by the Beach a lot and see this little cart that was always reselling stuff from the convenience store. And I thought we could do something so much cooler, like homemade ice cream and ice cream sandwiches when it's nice out and students are hanging out on the beach, and it would be lovely. It would be super local. [Cedric] got me an ice cream maker a couple years ago, so finally, this year we were talking about making it happen.
CK: Saturday, 8/16, was our first pop-up! Our first flyer is still at my office.
N-L: You mentioned that you loved hosting in your kitchen — could you tell me a little more about what this practice means to you?
RH: We host friends, family and neighbors. As much as I love what I do now, something I miss about not being in an industry anymore is that there is such joy that comes from welcoming people in, telling a story, speaking through food and a shared culture. [Cedric and I] both have that in common as something we deeply enjoy, so since the start of our relationship, that's something that we've done. Food is an opportunity to bring people together and share identities. We got married last year, and I defended my dissertation, so we had a lot going on, so we had to do it a little bit less, but we still love to do it today.
CK: We have a beautiful home, where we like to host people and make people feel comfortable in our home, similar to how we like people to be comfortable with our ice cream flavors. We are just marrying the design component into it to make it as thoughtful as possible. It's not to make it flashy, or make it pretend to be something else. It's truly a vessel to make it true to its raw form. Nothing is ostentatious.
N-L: How did you get the idea for the name Mishmish? Where did the idea and name come from?
RH: There was some debate for what the name should be.
CK: Oh, long, huge debates — everything we do is a debate! We got a dog in April at the beginning of this year, and since March, it has been the season of mishmish, which means apricot in Arabic. It's a summer food, something very light and funny. And it's cute! We call our dog Misha, and we named her before we even had the idea of having an ice cream business. So six months later, we were looking at stuff that resonated with us for our brand name. We wanted something that's cute, easy, accessible and repetitive, so we decided on this.
N-L: Can you walk me through the process of preparing for a pop up? What do your days leading up look like in preparation?
RH: It's a lot of work, so we usually don't do it every weekend. We start out the week with flavors that we really love, so we'll start making them at home. We'll start preparing the bases and the cookie portion for the ice cream sandwiches.
CK: We had a R&D portion every week, so we wanted to put out a couple recipes that are new.
RH: R&D ice cream sandwiches, for example, is a lot of work, because obviously you have to prepare it, bake it and test how they freeze. Do they actually stay soft? Are they enjoyable? And sometimes they're not. We've had many ice cream sandwiches that we tested where the cookie was not right.
CK: It’s also always so nice to have feedback from friends at work and get honest, harsh feedback. [But usually] it is always all positive. No one's digging deep.
N-L: You have a lot of really unique flavors like orange blossom and pistachio cookie; how do you choose your ice cream flavors?
RH: The sweet corn is my personal favorite. My family's from the south, and corn is a staple of the summer. It's been fun to introduce people to corn as an ice cream flavor. I think some flavors are sentimental, some draw from our backgrounds. For example, Cedric is Lebanese, and he draws on a lot of flavors from his culture.
CK: I've been making karak chai for a while at home. It's just such a comforting flavor; it just feels like home, and I love to introduce people to it. We also choose our flavors in a way that we want to convert a dessert that's not yet an ice cream, like mango sticky rice. We take it on as a challenge to figure it out. I'm not a cooking person, and I've never been as much in the kitchen, but it's interesting!
N-L: You use paper-based cups and wrappers and produce locally to minimize transport and refrigeration. In your eyes, how does Mishmish prioritize sustainability?
RH: The packaging is all compostable material. The food industry contributes a lot to climate change. We're obviously a very, very small pop-up business, but I think putting our values into action when it comes to the types of flavors we put out there and the types of packaging is within our control, and it is something we have enjoyed doing.
CK: Usually, frozen pints have been in store for a bit. Aside from having preservatives, it is also shipped with a cooler via trucks all the way from Vermont to Baltimore, with lots of carbon emission. And then putting it in a grocery store freezer will also utilize energy. In our small batches, they're stored in the fridge and the freezer for a maximum of a week, and we transport them by hand to Bird in Hand to sell them.
N-L: What do you love about spreading your ice cream to Baltimore? How did you choose Bird in Hand as the site for your pop-ups?
RH: We love Baltimore; it's where we met. Charles Village has been a wonderful home to us. We got married last year, so our co-op neighbors joined us in that celebration. Obviously, our families were there. [Baltimore] has been such a welcoming community to us.
CK: We got married at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), and we had a small parade all the way from our house. As in, there was like a band of music that walked us all the way from our home to our BMA. There were music trombones, and people were just creating flyers and streamers. I cannot survive in Baltimore without the community that it has. And every time we show up to Bird in Hand, clusters of these communities show up. We wouldn't have sold out without them.
RH: Our upstairs neighbor at our co-op is actually the owner of Bird in Hand. She is a good friend of ours, and we love her a lot, and she's always been very active with events in the community.
CK: And, fun fact, our first date was at Bird in Hand!
N-L: Ah, how cute! To transition a bit, what are your future goals for Mishmish?
RH: Obviously, we both have other full time careers, and this is a passion project. It is a question of how far do you lean in when you've got other things going on in your lives. Also, the winter is coming up, and one thing we've talked about a lot is that we haven't had as much time to do research and development (R&D), because we've been kind of going, going and going. We love exploring new flavors, new ways of preparing and presenting it, and it's hard to do that when you're on a deadline to prepare for the next weekend. The winter is actually a great time to pause for us to do a lot of that R&D so that we can have new flavors and experiences in spring.
CK: We are honestly surprised by the growth of Mishmish, and we're surprised by how it was received. We have a lot of followers, people are showing up and we are selling out. People want this, but we are not ready to give it to the people. I have a full time job. [Ross] has a full time job. We wake up in the morning and churn ice cream before getting ready for work... We are just as excited to explore the potential of this as we go. We want to be a bit more in control of this fast pace, so that's why we're going to slow it down to make sure it stays to our passion.
RH: We have friends at certain restaurants that we want to partner with, which is more suitable for the winter since we're not gonna be out on a patio. These are relationships that we have and that we care a lot about, so we are really passionate about doing things with them. You might see a pivot to where we do more special events.
N-L: If you could make one thing on the menu that encompasses both of you, what would it be?
CK: Our dog, Misha, is black, white and orange. And there’s an apricot component from Mishmish’s meaning, so we want to have an ice cream sandwich that has black sesame, vanilla and apricot flavors. They would be like good summation because [Ross] loves black sesame, I love apricot and vanilla is just vanilla. That's one that we're really passionate about making.
