Spice Up Your Life

Mabrúka brings North Africa to the North Atlantic

“I went to visit my parents after living here for two years and I experienced things differently,” Safa Jemai says of returning to her native Tunisia. She didn’t realise what she missed about her home country until she returned for a visit. “I started appreciating the food that my mom cooks, the spices, the places, the atmosphere, the sun, everything.”

If she couldn’t bring the sun back to Iceland with her, the spices would be the next best thing.

“I took certain types and we tried all different ones with the Icelandic food, like with meat and with fish and veggies,” she says. “And we were surprised that the mix that came together was so good. Like for example, Icelandic lamb with zaatar from Tunisia — muah!” She gives it a chef’s kiss, and it turned out that many chefs would agree.

Starting big

So Safa approached Þráinn Freyr Vigfússon, the chef at Iceland’s newest Michelin-star experience, ÓX, and the high-end Middle Eastern-inspired restaurant Sumac. “And I told him, ‘I have this idea about starting to import Tunisian spices that my mom makes from scratch, but I don’t know how to do it. I’m just a software developer,’” she recalls. “And he said, ‘Oh my God, we need this. Please do it!’ So I took that to my heart and told myself, ‘Okay, I’m going to see what happens.’”

She quickly learned that it would not be a simple process. “Some people said I should just buy them from other distributors and send them to Iceland,” she explains. “But I said no. The main thing was that I wanted them just like my mom makes them.” So in the end, it is her family that picks, dries, and grinds most of the spices by hand. The company is even named Mabrúka in her honour of Safa’s mother.
“I had this idea about starting to import Tunisian spices that my mom makes from scratch, but I don’t know how to do it. I’m just a software developer. “

By the time they’d sorted out the logics of production and importation, they already had clients lined up. From that first meeting with Þráin in 2020, they began to sell wholesale to a roster of Reykjavík restaurants — Sumac, Matarkjallarin, and Grillmarkaðurinn, to name a few — in 2021. By 2022, they had developed several spice blends and launched for individual orders as well. Their products are currently available at Hagkaup, Melabúðin, and Kronan on the way, plus they’re in talks with Scandinavian distributors with plans to expand abroad. The business has grown enough that Safa now splits her time between the spice trade and her software business.

Family matters

“I want to have it as a family company,” Safa says, explaining how her parents source and process most of the spices themselves. All of their products are sun dried and hand ground. Many of their blends feature zaatar, an herb in the same family as oregano and thyme, which grows wild around the Mediterranean. Her father collects it on his daily walks in the hills of Northern Tunisia. “I also want to support the community there,” she adds, noting that her parents are no longer alone in the production.

“The goal is to hire more and more women and provide a nice work environment for them. So there are now three women in the production.” She makes an effort to source their products from female vendors as well. “We buy our garlic from a woman that grows her own,” she explains. “We started buying 200 kilos every summer. Then it was not enough, so we also started buying from her friend. It’s better for them than going to the market and selling per kilo and it’s nice that there’s a story behind it.”

Even as the operation expands, it’s still Safa’s mother that keeps it all together. She goes so far as to describe her as a workaholic. “Every time I call her, she’s like, ‘Oh, so we’re going to do that and we’re going to buy some more of that and I need this or that.’ And I’m like, ‘Mom, could we just talk about our family stuff?’”

High-end and handmade

After beginning with their sun-dried lemon zest and organic garlic powder, Mabrúka developed spice blends for meats, fish and veggies. Next came a blend for shakshouka (known as oujja in Tunisia), a dish of poached eggs in a spiced tomato sauce. No Tunisian spice company could be complete, however, without the true staple of Tunisian cuisine: the savoury, spicy pepper paste called harissa.

“You have two types of harissa: the industrial one and the handmade one,” Safa explains. “The natural one, which my mom makes, is all handmade. It has different types of paprika and if you want high quality, it should be made only with olive oil, cumin and some garlic. It should be grainy,” she says. Mabrúka’s deep red paste looks nothing like the industrial harissa with its orangey colour and thin consistency. “Ours is thick because we don’t put water in it. We advise people when they buy it to add olive oil to conserve it better, because we don’t put any additives in it.”

Mabrúka is not the first to sell these spices in Iceland, but it is the first to offer this kind of quality. “So you remember in Iceland, there was like one bread bakery, and now we have fancy bread everywhere? And the same with coffee? This is the same with spices,” she concludes. “It’s about taking a basic commodity to a high standard. I want Mabrúka to be known for its high quality and authentic spices.”