The Middle Eastern Aisle Is Growing. The Question Is Who Tells the Story

Food media has quietly spent the last decade building a category called "Modern Middle Eastern" cooking. Whether it’s a course you can take, a food blog you can read, or a set of recipes you can start to add to your repertoire, it’s a term we are seeing more and more - and liking less and less.

What does it mean? What exactly is being ‘modernised’?

More importantly, who are the people doing the ‘modernising’?

The difference between exchange and erasure

Cultural exchange is where a dish travels with its origin still attached, while cultural appropriation - and as a consequence, cultural erasure - is where it travels under someone else's label instead and the origin quietly falls away.

As Palestinians, we have experienced our fair share of the latter; perpetuated by a significant cohort of brands, restaurants, and chefs and media. Part of the cultural erasure we have experienced is structural, as part of a wider political agenda - we don't need to name names here. Other times however, it's much more subtle and nuanced.

Dubai Chocolate is an interesting example. The only ‘Dubai’ aspect of it, is that the original combination was created in Dubai. You don’t have to look too deep to realise that the underlying base of it is Palestinian Kunafeh. I don't believe the erasure is structural here, but rather that "Dubai" has a certain marketability that "Palestinian" perhaps does not.

Ottolenghi however, is another example. He is a famous Israeli chef and cookbook author that grew up in West Jerusalem.

Unlike others, he has addressed the politics of the region. For example, on the specific question of appropriating Palestinian food, he has said on record in 2013 that in hindsight he would have taken the whole aspect of appropriation and ownership more seriously. He even went as far as to say that certain dishes from his cookbook, Jerusalem, are specifically symbols of Palestinian culture, not everybody's to claim.

However welcome this acknowledgement, it has not altered the public image he has built over two decades and several million book sales. All that people know is that his name is on the cover of the book, the entrance to the restaurant, and, more recently, on the side of the condiment jar.

It's the repeated omission over this extended period that means most people simply have not, and do not, ever have reason to ask where these dishes actually came from - or, they actively choose not to ask.

He is not just associated with the cuisine, but for many in the west he has become the representative of the cuisine that they choose to identify with - the "moderniser" bringing Middle Eastern cuisine to the contemporary home. This isn't necessarily our own opinion, he literally runs a Masterclass course on Modern Middle Eastern cuisine.

"Modernising" shouldn't mean "Europeanising"

Ottolenghi is one instance of this, not the whole pattern. Look at how "modern Middle Eastern" now functions as its own established genre, independent of any one name.

In 2018, Bon Appétit ran a widely shared guide under almost the same title, written by its then senior food editor, Andy Baraghani, an Iranian-American writer. While he was careful to frame the piece as personal rather than a portrait of the region as a whole, it’s the premise that I disagree with. We are Palestinian-British; we too, have been born in diaspora and straddle two cultures simultaneously, and our daily eating habits are naturally an amalgamation of each. This should not be considered ‘modernisation’; it is simply the expression of two cultures coexisting within us, neither supersedes the other.

BBC Food runs a standing collection called "Modern Middle East." At the time of writing it holds twelve recipes from eight contributors: Annie Rigg, Nigel Slater, Rick Stein, Nigella Lawson, Simon Rimmer, Jenny Chandler, Hattie Ellis and Dr Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed. Not one of them has any evident connection, by heritage or specialism, to the region's Arab cuisines.

In the West, "modern" often quietly means "made more European." This is problematic in itself, but who decided that there was something dated, or too much, or not quite refined enough about it as it already was? Even worse it seems to have become a genre that anyone can decide to host, with or without the proper credentials.

In reality the issue was never the food. Rather, the issue has been communication.

The food, and the culture around it, has simply been explained to mainstream audiences in a way designed to fit into a framework built around Western flavours, formats and aesthetics. It was always a matter of product-market fit, and herein lies the crux of the issue.

Take hummus, for example. The word simply means "chickpea" in Arabic, its main ingredient.

Corporations understood the market potential of hummus as a healthy dip, and proceeded to communicate hummus as just that, in order to maximise profit. No importance has been placed on the story of hummus because they didn't need to, and the prevailing wisdom would say that, that doesn't sell.

Now however, the market is proving that the story does sell, and it's an increasingly important factor for commercial potential. People seek value, now more than ever, but they're also looking to put their money behind brands with substance, brands that stand for something and do more than just make money.

For years, the safer position for many Palestinians was not to make an issue of any of this. Point out where a dish actually came from, and the conversation got called complicated, or political, before it had properly started.

Now, things have changed.

Why this is the reason we started Fil

Fil is on a mission to create the Middle Eastern pantry of the next generation - what does that mean?

It means the creation of a pantry that speaks directly to the live experience of our generation.

Those born and/or living in diaspora, who actively live between two cultures. Those who want a Shatta that tastes like home, but is adapted to the dishes they are eating on a daily basis. Those who want msakhan but, like many people in our generation, either didn’t learn how to cook it, or only learned how to cook it for 20+ people.

It’s about making the flavours of home more accessible and adapting them in a way that suits how we live today.

For now however it’s all about Shatta. Get Your Fil 🌶️