upper waypoint
Food

Bay Area Restaurants Will Allow Customers to ‘Pay What They Can’ — For One Day, Anyway

Luke Tsai
On August 26, a global movement from Mexico City arrives at Bay Area staples like Reem’s and Bombera.
Overhead view of a plate of two tostadas topped with fish and fried shallots, served on a wooden picnic table.
Smoked trout tostadas, one of the signature dishes at Oakland's Bombera. Bombera is one of four Bay Area restaurants signed up to participate in a global 'Pay What You Can' day on August 26, 2026. (Clara Rice, courtesy of Bombera)

In many ways, Masala y Maiz, the globally acclaimed Mexico City restaurant, was born in the Bay Area — in Oakland, specifically, where chef-owners Norma Listman and Saqib Keval first met and fell in love. Since opening in 2017, the restaurant has made a name for itself not only for its forward-thinking Mexican, Indian and East African fusion cuisine but also its very Oakland brand of activist, egalitarian politics. Most famously, the restaurant frequently hosts “Paga Lo Que Puedas” — i.e., “Pay What You Can” — days, allowing customers from all socioeconomic backgrounds to enjoy a Michelin-starred meal they otherwise might not be able to afford.

This year, the restaurant is taking this movement global. Keval and Listman recently declared August 26, 2026, a “global day of hospitality,” and they’re calling on restaurants around the world to adopt the Pay What You Can model at least for that one day. Participating restaurants will simply serve their regular menus, allowing guests to order whatever they like — and pay however much they’re able to afford.

Given Masala y Maiz’s Bay Area roots, it’s no surprise that four of the 33 restaurants worldwide that have signed up so far are located in the Bay: Reem’s in San Francisco, Bombera and Understory in Oakland, and Valley Swim Club in Sonoma.

In an outdoor courtyard, a man and woman in blue aprons prepare banana-leaf tamales in a large pot.
Norma Listman and Saqib Keval prepare tamales at an early iteration of their Mexico City restaurant, Masala y Maiz. (Sana Javeri Kadri, courtesy of Masala y Maiz)

Reem’s chef-owner Reem Assil, who has known Listman and Keval since Keval’s early days as a co-founder of the food justice group People’s Kitchen Collective, says signing up was “a no-brainer in this late-stage capitalism that’s just killing us.”

“We’ve got to do everything we can to push against the status quo,” she says. And by feeding people — for free, in some cases — restaurants wouldn’t just be making a symbolic gesture: “It’s something that materially impacts the community around you.”

Here in the Bay Area, there’s already some precedent for restaurants engaging in this kind of activism. Oakland’s Monster Pho has long hosted an annual free phở day, for instance. And collective-owned Understory, another of the Pay What You Can event’s participants, offers a Pay What You Can dish — typically a warm, nourishing noodle soup — on its regular menu all the time.

During the pandemic, Assil herself started a “Man’oushe It Forward” program at her Mission District Arab bakery that allowed customers who had the means to subsidize a free meal for someone who needed it.

“There’s always a power to collective action,” Assil says of the Masala y Maiz initiative. “Hopefully people are inspired by this and sign up.”

Indeed, part of the reason for announcing the event four months in advance, as Keval and Listman have, is that there’s still plenty of time for the movement to pick up momentum — and for the list of participating restaurants in the Bay Area to grow from four to 10, or 20, or even more.

Portrait of a chef in an khaki apron seated at the counter inside a restaurant.
Bombera chef-owner Dominica Rice-Cisneros. (Clara Rice, courtesy of Bombera)

For Dominica Rice-Cisneros of Bombera, the Pay What You Can day is an opportunity for her restaurant to connect with its neighbors in Oakland’s Dimond District in a more approachable way. So many people in the neighborhood are working-class folks laboring in various sectors of the service industry, Rice-Cisneros explains. They’re Peet’s baristas, pizza-slingers at Cybelle’s and grocery-baggers at the Farmer Joe’s supermarket. They’re postal workers and auto mechanics. And while some of these neighbors have become occasional customers at Bombera, many others have stayed away, perhaps afraid that the food will be too “fancy” and that they won’t be able to afford it in the end.

“There’s a shyness around it,” she says. “So I want to make sure that this is a risk-free chance for them to order something they would never really order, and not feel bad about it.”

Reservations at Bombera are normally released one month in advance, with a handful of seats set aside for walk-ins. It’ll be no different for the Aug. 28 Pay What You Can promotion, but Rice-Cisneros plans to give those neighborhood workers first dibs on snagging a table for themselves and for their families.

In gentrifying cities like Oakland — and Mexico City, for that matter — there are so many upscale restaurants that have a tenuous relationship with their surrounding neighborhoods, with wealthy out-of-towners forming much of their customer base. Adopting a “pay what you can” model, even for just a day, might help bridge some of that gap.

View of a restaurant courtyard decorated with festive banners. The name of the restaurant, "Bombera," is visible on its facade.
Bombera hopes to use the Pay What You Can promotion to reach out to workers at neighboring businesses in Oakland’s Dimond District. (Clara Rice, courtesy of Bombera)

Rice-Cisneros’ hope is that new customers might come in and see that it is possible to come into her restaurant, order a quesadilla and an horchata, and have a nice sit-down dining experience for around $20 — that it isn’t always necessary to splurge on the duck carnitas mole and a bunch of cocktails.

Still, she’s thinking about adding an orange mole to the menu for that day only, just to make the meal extra special. And if everything goes well?

“I think definitely it’s something I would love to continue doing once a year,” Rice-Cisneros says.

The Masala y Maiz–organized “Pay What You Can” day will take place on August 26, 2026. See the event webpage for a full list of participating restaurants — or, if you’re an interested restaurant owner, to sign up to participate.

lower waypoint
next waypoint
Player sponsored by