That interest in food continues its upwards trajectory is hardly breaking news. We live in the era of Jamie, Nigella, Rick, Delia, Gordon et al.
In this delicious new zeitgeist we rush home to watch the Great British Bake off, go to restaurants that are called "kitchens" and salivate over what we now call "street food". Authenticity and integrity are everything, even if it also involves very big money.
I felt the full force of this seemingly unstoppable movement last week in London when I attended The Guild of Food Writers annual awards in Opera Holland Park, where 50 authors and broadcasters were shortlisted in 14 categories of writing and journalism. It was a full-on foodie love-in.
Two Lebanese beverage companies, Château Ksara and IXSIR were smart enough to spot the commercial opportunity by agreeing to be among the event’s sponsors and it was not long before a few of the great and the good of food writing (I mean some seriously influential people) were cooing (seriously cooing) about Lebanon and its culinary tradition.
They quite openly said they would love to visit (ie be invited) and that they were not in the slightest put off by the foreign office advisory on travelling in Lebanon or the country’s proximity to ISIL forces plying their fiendish trade in Syria. “We don’t worry about things like that,” the head food writer of a national daily said with cheerful sangfroid.
But British composure aside, the Lebanese are nonetheless grappling with yet another manifestation of what has become a chronic image problem. If it’s not one thing it’s another; and these days the Syrian conflict threatens to spill over into parts of the Bekaa Valley and the northern city of Tripoli. The foreign office warning does not make happy reading but the frustrating thing is that there are so many potential feel-good factors that the country could sell to a world that has apparently fallen head over heels with all things Mediterranean.
The tourism ministry should be responsible for helping sell Lebanon as foodie heaven. And if it is not up to the job, the task should be farmed out.
If I were running the show, I would give the job to Kamal Mouzawak, the man who for the past decade has almost single-handedly been fighting to correctly position Lebanon in today’s food-bonkers world.
With Tawlet – Arabic for table – his popular restaurant concept, Mr Mouzawak has reminded the Lebanese of the origins of their culinary heritage. His formula is simple. He rotates an army of housewives from Lebanon’s different regions, who cook food they make in their kitchens every day. The restaurant lives and breathes on traditions derived from a melting pot of different ethnic influences from the Lebanese mountains, the Bekaa and coastal plains that go back centuries. It is marketing gold dust.
But there is a more pressing reason for the Lebanese to make a robust stand when it comes to their food. On April 6 in this paper, I suggested that a new generation of restaurateurs in the UK, the US, Denmark, Dubai and Australia were driving Lebanese food to a new and exciting culinary erogenous zone.
So far so good, but ironically this new drive was started by the Israeli food writer and chef, Yotam Ottolenghi, a man who with his Palestinian partner Sami Tamimi has championed the region’s culinary pull, but and here’s the rub, in doing so, other Israelis have made no bones about claiming traditional Arabic food and ingredients – such as tahini and sumac – as their own.
And these are not the fears of a paranoid columnist. At least two influential Lebanese restaurateurs have voiced similar concern that their food might be stolen. In 2010, the then tourism minister Fadi Abboud, in the face of an Israeli attempt to share the culinary spoils when it came to hummus, called for the dip to be given a Lebanese designation in the same way the Greeks claimed feta cheese as their own.
What might now be just an irritation could spiral into full blown cultural theft. What’s next – Israeli arak?
Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton.
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