Although she has lived in Boulder for 30 years, Mara King’s memory is still happily haunted by one aroma from her childhood in Hong Kong.
“There was a vendor outside my elementary school who sold barbecued squid on a stick as a snack,” King recalls. “They were deeply yummy. You could smell them from a mile away.”
As an adult, King worked at a series of Boulder eateries, including Hunan Gardens and Ristorante Laudisio, and became one of the women sushi chefs working at Sushi Zanmai. In 2008, she founded Ozuke, a pickled and fermented food brand, with a friend — the beginning of what she calls her “fermentation path.”
That path led to her current role at Boulder’s Id Est Hospitality Group, one with an unusual job title: director of fermentation.
“I worked to put a fermentation program in place at the restaurants, developing recipes, training chefs and making kimchi, hot sauces, soy sauce, kvass and kombucha,” she says.
Last year, King transformed 900 pounds of leftover bread into a fermented sauce.
ID Est restaurants — BASTA and Dry Storage in Boulder and The Wolf’s Tailor and Hey Kiddo in Denver — have received multiple James Beard and Michelin honors. King developed Dry Storage’s milling project, sourcing heirloom and ancient grains. Her responsibilities in recent years have expanded to emphasizing sustainability and a zero waste approach.
According to King, the best way for women to reach their goals is to not think like a man.
“Listen to your intuition when people try to push you,” she says. “The most valuable thing is taking time to decide how big you want to be, and then build a strong plan around that.”
“Maybe male food entrepreneurs would benefit from being humble and understanding a situation before they act."
This is part of a larger story, "Portraits in great taste," profiling women who are shaping the way we eat, drink and buy food in Boulder. Read other profiles in the series here.