During the 2024 Fall retreat of Yale Pop-Up, Yale’s undergraduate dining student club, Maia Donath ’28 and Talia Namdar-Cohen ’27 realized they had a similar appetite for spreading joy through food. 

What began as a conversation about their favorite dishes — crispy rice with raw fish, whipped ricotta on sourdough, decadently garnished sandwiches — quickly evolved into a bold idea: creating their own catering company. Now they hope to make food at Yale more fun and affordable. Their brainchild, which they named SAQIN, which means “knife” in Hebrew, is a catering company based in New Haven and New York. 

“We’re not just a catering company,” Namdar-Cohen said. “We see SAQIN as the college-level baby sister of a hospitality group. It’s about food, yes, but also the experience and the connection it creates.”

Namdar-Cohen and Donath, who describe themselves as “eclectic cooks,” dabble in a diverse range of cuisines. The pair source ingredients from New Haven local staples like Whole Foods and The Loop by Hachiroku, as well as from their personal collection of unique finds — chili oil from a New York market, pomegranate molasses brought back from Italy. Donath even has a designated “sauce corner” in her Lanman-Wright Hall dorm room.

At Yale, SAQIN collaborates with clubs, organizations and students, catering events ranging from a recent 17o1 Records concert to intimate birthday dinners. The group has eight more events lined up before the end of the semester.

When clients approach SAQIN, the pair works with them to customize a menu that fits their specific desires.

“We’re visual learners,” Donath said, describing their menu-creating process. “We scroll through cookbooks, photos and memories of dishes and flavors that excited us in the past. It’s our favorite part of the process — it doesn’t even feel like work.” 

Namdar-Cohen and Donath, who attended the same high school in New York City but did not know each other then, describe themselves as “two halves of the same brain” despite their very different thinking and creative processes. Donath calls Namdar-Cohen a “visionary,” referencing her extensive list of ideas in their “dream big” Google document, while Namdar-Cohen describes Donath as a “very grounded force.”

“They seem fully themselves when they’re cooking,” said Mira Dubler-Furman ’27, a long-time friend of the pair. “Personally, I get very overwhelmed in grocery stores, but they run around with huge shopping carts excitedly looking for tahini paste. It’s their passion.”

At Yale, Namdar-Cohen and Donath have had to get creative with their cooking spaces, relying on student kitchens in residential colleges and friends’ off-campus apartments. Next year, Namdar-Cohen plans to live off-campus in a space with a dedicated kitchen. The pair also noted that they are open to renting industrial kitchen spaces in New Haven for larger catering events.

“Since I met Maia, I’ve been super impressed with the way her brain works: she thinks in food,” said Metztli Lopez ’28. “We will try one thing that is really delicious and then immediately I can see the wheels in her head turning, thinking ‘Oh, this would be really good with this.’ The dishes come to her, almost in a vision.”

Some of Dubler-Furman’s favorite SAQIN dishes so far include salmon crudo, baba ganoush and a pepper dip served with pita. Lopez enjoys anything they make that includes raw fish — a SAQIN specialty — such as a salmon and peach carpaccio dish and a butternut squash rigatoni.

At the center of SAQIN, said Tamdar-Cohen and Donath, lie the people — at Yale and beyond — that their food aims to celebrate.

“We saw the biggest gap here [at Yale] — nobody was giving people fun and delicious food at an affordable price,” said Donath, “The key that we’re investing in is the Yale culture and people.”

In the near future, SAQIN is preparing for their New York launch event during November recess. But, Donath and Namdar-Cohen see infinite possibilities for how SAQIN could grow someday — dreams ranging from opening up sandwich shops and sashimi bars.

SAQIN’s Instagram account can be found at @saqincatering.