Cuisine is often the best way to learn about a new culture. And if you want to show how several cultures can come together, blending flavors in the kitchen is a good place to start.
That’s exactly what happened when Syrian, Iranian, Sri Lankan, and refugees from the Ivory Coast teamed up with French chefs for the Refugee Food Festival in Paris.
For Syrian refugee and chef of 20 years, Mohammad El Khaldy, syncing up with Parisian chef Stéphane Jégo brought just that opportunity.
The duo are just one of nine teams who came together for the Refugee Food Festival in Paris, which was organized by Food Sweet Food, UNHCR, Les Cuistots Migrateurs, and MakeSense.
Attendees of the Refugee Food Festival could dine at nine restaurants in Paris, exploring new cuisines and getting to know refugee chefs as well as the ones in their own city. Restaurants like Kialatok offered cooking classes.
Others, like Stéphane Jégo’s restaurant L’Ami Jean, opened up the kitchen to experiment fusing cuisine. Jégo and Khaldy worked together bringing out traditionally Syrian ingredients like pistachios, tahini, freekeh — a roasted grain with unique flavor in a French style. Dishes at L’Ami Jean expanded from the traditional French/Basque cuisine to include zucchini stuffed with beef and yogurt sauce to Shanklish, cow or sheep’s milk cheese often covered in za’atar and Aleppo pepper.
While the event took place in June, the impact and relations made between chefs with a passion for their culture, and appreciation for learning new cuisine has only just begun.
“The kitchen is a universal trait of union between people belonging to different cultures. It allows to enter the world of another by sharing what is both the most singular and most universal,” states the Refugee Food Festival’s manifesto.
Even participants tasting cuisine from the food fest took on a new attitude toward refugees – shattering misconceptions refugees too often face.
“It gives a very different look on refugees, who are usually shown through the sadness of their experience, not their skills,” a woman attending the fest says in the video above.
That was the mission of the food festival — to engage chefs and foodies #withrefugees while challenging foodies perceptions of refugees. French chefs involved in the festival also noted challenges of keeping up with Millennial’s appetite for unique and exotic cuisine, which can be met by combining cultures.
The food fest is not the only platform highlighting the skills chefs who’ve fled home bringing their cooking techniques across borders.
Shows such as Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” (you can also catch it on Netflix) captures the importance of cuisine in countries like Lebanon. In the episode “Beirut,” which aired over a year ago, Bourdain travels to Lebanon — a country with 18 recognized sects of religion. On the street at a small round table he shares a meal with a man who was an English teacher in Syria before fleeing to Beirut.
If you missed the food fest, and are in New York City area there’s an app Eat Offbeat which delivers traditional homemade meals cooked by refugee chefs from Chef Rachana’s Nepalese Momos to Iraqi Chef Dhuha’s Sumaq Salad.
Plus, supporting female chefs in the U.S. when only 18 percent of head chefs are women is another bonus as all the apps chefs are women.
Supporting efforts like these not only helps show support refugees but also can open your eyes to cuisine from all over the world, right here at home.