Power of the plate

Peace Meal Kitchen — a popup dinner series in Detroit — is using food to protest President Donald Trump’s travel ban, NPR reports. Founder Mana Heshmati, an engineer, started the project in April as a “low-profit” organization “dedicated to educating diners on regions that are misrepresented in the media or struggling with political conflict.”

Initially, Heshmati served traditional Persian cuisine in an effort to increase understanding of Iran, but also featured the food of other regions such as Palestine. However, following Trump’s executive order affecting travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, she told NPR that the series morphed “into a platform to positively impact the community.”

Peace Meal Kitchen is an exercise in gastrodiplomacy —fostering cultural exchange and increased understanding through food. As NPR wrote in 2014, while the concept is fairly new in terms of its place in cultural diplomacy as a whole, “the idea itself can be traced back to the ancient Romans, who often made peace with their enemies over a good meal.”

“Food has always been used as a bridging t ool throughout many cultures throughout history,” Heshmati told NPR.

“It takes out some of the stigma of some of the politics. It helps people reach a new level of understanding about a different culture. Food makes everything approachable.”

At one of Heshmati’s dinners this past weekend, she served Persian dishes including ghormeh sabzi ( herb stew), naan- e barbari ( Persian flatbread), sabzi khordan ( side dish of fresh herbs and raw vegetables), and seer torshi ( garlic pickle). As with many other food businesses across the U. S., Peace Meal Kitchen donated proceeds of the event to the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU). NPR reports that in less than two hours, they had sold all their food and had raised more than US$700.

FOOD HAS ALWAYS BEEN USED AS A BRIDGING TOOL.