Hi all! I'm Keara, a software engineer and Puerto Rican wife to my husband, who's from Moldova (interesting combo, right?) The first time I flew there, I didn't know half of the ingredients/meals and couldn't find what I was used to cooking with. When we first started cooking for each other, neither of us knew what to make that we'd both actually want to eat. So for every meal, I found myself trying to make Puerto Rican dishes a little more Moldovan, and vice versa, borrowing techniques from both, and realized our favorite comfort foods were more similar than I expected. And we grew to really appreciate each other's different cuisines and tastes, but it's still a work in progress. I wanted something that understood why each culture cooks the way it does, could work with the ingredients you actually have, and could thoughtfully blend traditions into something new, not just mash two cuisines' ingredient lists together. Mesa Comuna is that: tell it what you're craving and which two cultures, and it finds the dish each one already has for that craving, then fuses them by technique and flavor. Started with Puerto Rican and Moldovan (our kitchen), now supports American, Filipino, Japanese, Mexican, Romanian, Italian, Chinese, Indian, and Thai (I am still growing this list) Would love feedback, especially from anyone else cooking between two cultures or another international couple experiencing the same thing.

Mesa Comuna — a shared table

Recipes that blend two cultures without losing either one

Recipes that blend two cultures without losing either one