Syrian food flavoured with gratitude
Displaced women prepare feast at all-you-can-eat dinner
In Arabic, tayybeh means kind, generous, delicious. In Vancouver, Tayybeh is becoming better known as a regular pop-up Syrian feast cooked by women who’ve endured unimaginable hardships. It speaks powerfully about the emotional role of food and community.
To me, it’s sheer grace. The women are wounded and raw from the atrocities experienced in their homeland; some have been in Vancouver for mere months, struggling to adapt and survive. Yet they bring sunshine, life and tears of gratitude to these dinners. Syrian musicians help keep spirits high, I admit.
The all-you-can-eat dinners ($60) are full-out banquets (without alcohol). When I visited, there were platters piled high with 14 or 15 different Syrian dishes and just one pass was enough to bloat most attendees. The dinners, held in different locations about once a month (look for information on Facebook), offer uniquely Syrian dishes and you can taste the love. Many of them take several days to prepare in a commissary.
“As someone who’s lived in the Middle East, I’ve eaten in many of the countries, but in Syria, there are so many regional differences and the food is so rich and diverse,” says Tayybeh founder Nihal Elwan.
“There’s such a huge variety, I’m learning about so many dishes I’ve never heard of. Food is such an integral part of Syrian culture, they cook with so much love, and it’s food that’s rarely been commercialized outside of Syria. There’s been an embargo for so many years, cooks in Syria learned to work with what’s local. In the north, there’s lots of cherries. One of the cooks lived near the sea so she’s well versed in seafood.”
The women insist on from-scratch cooking, and make their own yogurt and other cheeses. “They scoff at me when I suggest buying cheese,” says Elwan.
I attended a dinner in the hall of the Shaughnessy Heights United Church. I saw some familiar Middle Eastern dishes — like hummus, baba ghannouj, tabbouleh and fattoush — but the rest were uniquely Syrian.
They were, as spelled on the menu: mhammara (red pepper hummus with ground breadcrumbs, walnuts, pomegranate molasses); tableh (lettuce, bulgur wheat, peppers, tomatoes, molasses, green onions; kibbeh nayyeh (bulgur wheat, peppers, tomatoes, onions); yalanji (similar to dolmades); fattet jaj (layers of marinated chicken, rice, ground chicken and bread and topped with yogurt and fried nuts); kibbet saniyeh (layers of ground beef, bulgur, ground nuts, spices); harra esbaou (lentils, pasta, home-baked bread with tamarind, pomegranates, topped with bread and fried nuts); makmour baajan (smoked eggplant with potatoes in rich tomato sauce); riz bel shareyyeh (rice with golden fried vermicelli).
There was freshly baked saaj bread for mopping up sauces, and nammoura (semolina cake with coconut, topped with slivered almonds) for dessert.
I had a little bit of everything — all fresh-tasting, healthy and hovered over by a pride of cooks. Apparently, friendly competition in the kitchen keeps them pushing even harder.
Elwan, whose background is in international development, gender issues and women’s empowerment, is delighted with outcomes. First, there’s the huge clamour for tickets (you book online). For the dinner I attended, the fourth, 100 tickets sold out in 14 minutes.
“It shows people like the food and the sense of community,” she says.
“But the thing I love is women are front and centre. Traditionally, in Syria, men are bread earners and women are at home, and their cooking is taken for granted. Here, we celebrate what they do and they’re earning money for the family; the men play support roles by shopping, serving and helping with the dishes. The incredible effort the women put in is acknowledged.”
The group is just getting started. They’ve been approached to cater events, and have a small retail division starting up — just cookies so far but they’re working on jams. They’ll be ramping up the retail arm soon for sales in stores. And then, in the future, a Syrian restaurant.
It means a lot to these displaced souls.