Meet Sadaf Qadir | Creative Project Manager & Food and Hiking Enthusiast

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sadaf Qadir and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sadaf, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I am from Orange County, California. I grew up and spent a majority of my life in Huntington Beach. But my family background is very rich and vibrant and instilled in me a great sense of community. My parents are both Pakistani immigrants and we are all Muslims. Growing up in a post- 9/11 world as a Muslim in America was challenging at times but my parents wanted to raise their children understanding both the religion (Islam) and the culture (South Asian). When I was younger, my community was found through the limited mosques (masjids in Arabic) and religious schools. I spent countless hours there and that built a very strong foundation for my identity as a Muslim American. Despite having this community, there were many moments were we also felt alone or misunderstood. One of those spaces was in the space of food. We stuck by eating halal food and it was often difficult to find 10-15 years ago. So any new halal spot would get us super excited. That instilled some great love for food and trying new food in me from an early age. Eating out was rare because it was not the most friendly for our diet. But as the world has changed and our community has grown, we now have many halal, vegetarian, and seafood options to choose from (all of which I can eat). I’ve always been known as the foodie of my friend group and that was the main inspiration behind me starting my OC Trails and Treats IG account. One day my friend asked me for some food recommendations in OC and I provided her a few options to which she replied, “Thank you food fairy.” And that’s when this account was born (my original username was sadafthefoodfairy). I wanted to keep it focused on halal food because even though there are more options, it can still be challenging to eat at certain restaurants. So I wanted to be a source of information for my fellow halal food followers.

The second part of that for me was that my parents shied away from attending public school events or putting us into activities where there were no other Muslims because they had no idea how people would respond to us. So I sometimes felt that I missed out on experiences like being in a sport or having a group of friends I could regularly hang out with (my Muslim friends often lives 30-45 minutes away from me). As I’ve grown, I’ve felt more pride and confidence in showing up as myself and enjoying being in spaces you might not always think you’ll find Muslims, especially Muslim women. And one of those spaces for me was hiking. I regularly started hiking with my friend a year ago and we’ve gotten to explore beautiful parts of Orange County. I wanted to start featuring more trails and be a space for other Muslim women to relate to.

Eventually at some point, it made sense to just bridge both of those passions and I became OC Trails and Treats.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My career journey has been far from linear but I absolutely love where I am at now. I’m currently a Creative Project Manager and I work on super cool creative and marketing work within the companies I’ve been a part of. However, it wasn’t always what I wanted to do. In fact I had no idea it was a job a person COULD do until I started doing it. In my college life I was hard set on being a doctor and everything I did was medicine related. Until I got burnt out by it and it felt daunting to me to have to live through so much more education. I started to explore more options and found myself in an internship where I got to do some regulatory affairs for international cosmetics. From there, I continued experimenting with different aspects of a company’s operations because it was a smaller company and I found my passion in the marketing work. Immediately I knew that’s where I belonged and continued to work hard to pursue that. I ended up in a creative project manager role soon enough and the rest was history! This has impacted what and how I operate my social platforms (I try to maintain a balance so I don’t get overwhelmed by constantly having creative work happening around me. It was certainly not easy and there were a lot of moments where I felt imposter syndrome (because I’m not a creative by training so how did I belong in this space?). But being in the role I am now, I think back to my earlier life and I realized that I spent a LOT of it doing art. In the summers my mom would set us up with many art projects to keep us busy and I loved all of them. And so it wasn’t that I was not a creative, it was just that I had somehow taught myself along the way that that wasn’t important. But I think when something is a true calling and when someone’s heart belongs somewhere, they find their way back to it and that’s what happened to me. A lot of the creative work I drive is digital now but that doesn’t make it any less fun. I’ve also picked up many tricks and tips along the way from the amazing group of creative people I’ve worked with. Something I’d want the world to know about me and my story is that even though many times the odds are against your favor, you have to just keep your head down and keep going. There were and are a lot of spaces where I seemingly don’t belong in (I’m too female, too Muslim, too opinionated, too enthusiastic, even sometimes too smart) but I didn’t let that bring me down and instead now I seek spaces where I know I can be accepted and that’s where I do my best work.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
This is the best question for me because that’s what a lot of my OC Trails and Treats account is! A week long in SoCal/ LA doesn’t feel long enough but if I had a friend visiting the area, here’s how I’d recommend we spend our time:

Sunday:
Wake up early, go on a beach hike — something like Crystal Cove in Newport Beach. After that, if we’re at crystal cove, we’d stop by the little shake shack and grab a shake before heading to brunch. For brunch we’d get OEB which has a ton of great options. In the afternoon, I’d recommend stopping by at fashion island and grabbing dinner at True Foods (gotta have a little healthy food).

During the weekdays, I’d recommend sticking to activities that tend to be super busy on the weekends. So we’d definitely head to Disneyland (churros and Dole whip would be a MUST) and on the day that we went to Disney, I’d take my friend to an amazing local halal Thai food spot called Thai Corner Kitchen. On another day, I’d recommend going to Santa Monica pier followed by going to Crumbs and Whiskers which is LA’s first cat cafe and spend some time with the kitties there. I would make it a MUST to go to Holbox at some point during the trip which is located in a kinda random food court in LA but has the best seafood I’ve experienced in Los Angeles. When we’re back in Orange County, I’d take them to experience the best falafel ever at Sababa Falafel Shop. I’d also recommend they visit some outdoor shopping plazas like Irvine Spectrum, the District and the Tustin Marketplace. Within these places some of my favorite halal eateries are I CAN KBBQ and Utopia Euro Caffe. I’d also take them to Hoa Sen which is my favorite vegan/vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant (I am a regular of theirs).

If they’re coming here during the cooler months and there’s snow, I’d take them up to Wrightwood (has a much better drive up than Big Bear) to experience the snow but ALSO to Palm Springs and ride the Aerial Tramway (sometimes there’s snow up there as well). If they’re here in the warmer months, I’d spend more time driving along PCH and stopping at all the beaches we can but also take a night trip to Joshua Tree to stargaze.

If they have more time on the weekend here, I’d recommend they go to the Irvine farmer’s market (Mariner’s church) where they can experience a whole different world of fresh produce, eggs, cheeses, oils, and just food in general or to the Long Beach Marina Farmers market (from which you have views of the marina!). Across the street from the farmers market is 2nd and PCH and there you can find a yummy vegan restaurant called Hungry Angelina’s.

Lastly for food, we’d tackle some of my favorite halal comfort food spots — Big Al’s Pizzeria and Craft by Smoke and Fire.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d have to dedicate my shoutout to my friends. As I mentioned in a previous question, without my friends my food account would not have existed. It was something I debated doing for a while before but when I heard my friend refer to me as the “food fairy” I knew that that was it. And I had to claim that title.

I also did not start hiking trails alone and that was a hobby I regularly got into because of a friend as well. We met up one day after years and decided our activity that day would be a hike. While we were on the trail, we both turned to each other and were like, “I love doing this but I never really have anyone to go with” and it was a lightbulb moment for both of us as we realized we in fact, could go with each other.

Instagram: octrailsandtreats

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadaf-qadir/

Other: TikTok: octrailsandtreats

Image Credits
N/A, I took these photos