Chemical engineer’s jams among best in S.F.
Saba Parsa will drive a hundred miles for damson plums and drop everything to get the best Blenheim apricots. She’s elbowed people aside for a few fragile mulberries at the farmers’ market and tracked down hot leads on California mangoes. Her text and email relationships with certain farmers would make chefs jealous.
Parsa has been making unusual jams for 13 years, winning five Good Food Awards with her brand Saba Jam. But she’s simmered behind the scenes due to her limited drops — just four times a year, when micro batches would often sell out within hours. That’s changing this season: Parsa has finally stocked up at a new kitchen in Berkeley, where fans will have a full month to shop for jars over the holidays.
Parsa grew up in Tehran, the capital of Iran, coming from a rich tradition of produce and preserves. She often visited her posh grandmother north near the Caspian Sea, who didn’t cook but loved to eat, directing her cook to can tomatoes and make marmalade with produce from the family orchard. Parsa remembers her kitchen as an elaborate production, filled with wild pomegranates and walnuts. Fruit starred at fabulous parties.
But Parsa’s family didn’t want her to cook. Her parents encouraged her to study in the United States. For her grandmother, said Parsa, “It was like, we worked so hard to get out of the kitchen, why would you want to go back?” Her mother cried tears of joy when Parsa received a student visa to attend UC Berkeley. Parsa worked for over a decade as a chemical engineer, building labs for DNA sequencing. In hindsight, she sees similarities to running a commercial kitchen, only swapping optical instruments for jelly pans.
And yet, Parsa fell hard for the seasonal produce in Northern California, embracing the “sensory overload” of its beauty and smell. She started making jam and mailing jars to a boyfriend across the country in 2010. That quickly spun into applying for a license to sell jam from home and squeezing into shared kitchens.
Parsa sources niche fruit varieties directly from small farmers, chatting them up at the markets. “I buy the expensive things,” Parsa said. “If it’s a fruit that’s beautiful, I’ll buy it and figure out how to sell it. Which drives anyone with any kind of financial sense crazy.”
She pairs that precious produce with liqueurs and herbs, but only to enhance the fruit, never overwhelm with perfume. A dozen different flavors drop every season: The award winner and bestseller is the Aprium Noyaux, combining this year’s tart hybrid fruit with an almond extract made from last year’s pits. The new Olallieberry Nocino sinks the inky berries in an unripened walnut liqueur with nutmeg, allspice and cloves. She uses the bare minimum amount of sugar and lemon juice, no added pectin or preservatives. Each jam retains its own texture, from rugged boysenberry seeds to silky smooth mango. She would never blast in a blender, she said — “I don’t want sauce!”
“She has an extraordinary relationship to fruit,” said her old friend Samin Nosrat, the chef, cookbook author and television host. “In some ways, I think it’s in her blood,” she went on. “Iranians measure time by what fruit is in season.”
Parsa does make a quince jam, the classic Persian flavor, and you can taste other touches throughout, in the sour thrum of plums and lemons, and earthy base of beets and carrots. She’ll tint tomatoes with a hint of sunny saffron, or give tayberries a whiff of rose petals. “I taste for eating out of hand, but she tastes for jamming,” Nosrat said. “She has an ability to imagine what fruit is going to taste like in a jar in six months.”
Saba Jam is hardly the first artisanal jam maker in the Bay Area. Parsa hopes to continue the tradition of June Taylor in Berkeley, who recently retired the fruitcakes after 30 years. Jam does seem to be having a moment right now, and not only in the sourdough toast scene in the Bay Area. Bonne Maman has been trending on TikTok, with people brandishing mini jars of special edition flavors every day in December. But while content creators rush to Costco, locals might prefer to visit a small maker in Berkeley.
Parsa’s family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, but she is making mini jars for stocking stuffers. After years bouncing between shared kitchens, it feels good to finally have a home for the holidays. The new kitchen in Berkeley is a sublease from Morell’s Bread, in the same building as Third Culture Bakery. The jam is available online for local pickup or national shipping, or on shelves at the Mill in San Francisco, Parkside Cafe in Stinson Beach, and more. Plus, Parsa’s planning a lineup of events in December, including open houses and pop-ups.
“She’s this funny little creature,” Nosrat said. “Who spends all of her time and energy — for really no reason and certainly no profit — making truly some of the most extraordinary products for us to buy.”