San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Two chefs on the state of Arabic food in America.
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For London author Yasmin Khan (“The Saffron Tales: Recipes From the Persian Kitchen”), Oakland chef Reem Assil has been an inspiration, an example of an Arab American woman who not only celebrates heritage, but makes a social and political statement with her work.
Khan is in the Bay Area to promote her second cookbook, “Zaitoun: Recipes From the Palestinian Kitchen.” Already a bestseller in the United Kingdom, the book is getting tons of buzz here as well.
One of Khan’s Bay Area stops will be a (sold-out) pop-up dinner at Assil’s eponymous bakery, Reem’s, in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood. A few days before the dinner, the two chefs met over platters of flatbread and fattoush at Assil’s Jack London Square restaurant, Dyafa, to discuss the state of Arabic food in America, and their respective efforts to use food as a platform for advocacy and social justice.
(The following conversation highlights have been edited for clarity and length.)
Q: The Chronicle: How did you two meet?
Reem Assil: I feel like I’ve known Yasmin forever. We met at Cherry Bombe (an annual industry gathering held by the women and foodfocused magazine of the same name), when they did it in San Francisco (in 2017), and I was introducing a panel on cultural appropriation in which — we said it was like all the brown people on one panel — it was all the most amazing women.
Yasmin Khan: It was such a kick-ass group of people.
Assil: Preeti Mistry.
Khan: Tanya Holland.
Assil: Lisa Fetterman (founder and CEO of Nomiku, a San Francisco company credited as creating the first home sous vide immersion circulator) was the moderator. It was really, really amazing. I feel like we just hit it off. We met each other in the green room and we just went back. I didn’t know anything about Yasmin. I didn’t know about her work. It felt like I was looking at the future me.
Khan: We both come from a background of community work and social justice, grassroots work, which is quite unusual in the food world. And both coming to this quite recently in our lives, relatively, there just felt to be a lot of shared understanding. I think that’s a thread in both of our works — you can see that playing out in how we’ve approached talking about food, and seeing the role of food in a wider context.
Assil: We’re on the fringes, so it’s refreshing to be like, “oh, she gets it.” So I felt like we hit it off right away.
Khan: I feel like what you said was just so true, because I think that for those of us that come from a social organizing background, how we see the world and how we see our role in the world has always been there. I think the food world can sometimes exist in sort of a bubble.
When I started writing (“Zaitoun”), I consciously made it a book that talked about the reality of what happens to Palestinians. You have to be quite privileged to think that food and politics are separate because actually for most people, whether in the U.S. or Palestine, they’re not. Your ability to access food, the type of food that’s available to you, the way your farming communities work, you know, food isn’t separate from politics in that way. Part of both of our missions is to show that.
Assil: And to embrace that. That’s something very human. I always say, ‘Oh, I’m Palestinian.’ ” It’s in my blood. We can’t separate our existence from the politics, you know, from a very young age. In a way, I feel like I’m finding my voice. It’s taken many years to get where I am
today, to be able to be so outspoken and unapologetic.
Q: Why has “Zaitoun” resonated with readers?
Khan: I’ve been traveling around the country and it’s about halfway through my tour. Ordinary Americans, they want to know what’s going on (in the Middle East). It can be quite hard to see through the noise. As a Brit coming here, (I’m) seeing how much more contentious it is just to talk about human rights in a place.
It’s very interesting to me that the concept of talking about equality and human rights for a people is seen to be controversial (in the U.S.), whereas in Europe it isn’t. That’s something I really wanted to do with the book. Food is such a great way to start a conversation, to bring people in over something and connect with, like, beautiful breads and olives and pickles and sensory things that make you feel happy and alive. And from that start kind of weaving in some of the backstory.
Assil: That idea of Arab hospitality, it’s so true. We take people in, but also the table is where we have all the hard conversations. We do not filter. What would it be like if we put the guards down and the food (becomes) the common denominator to make it safe for us to be able to have these real conversations?
Q: How would you de-
scribe what’s happening right now in the Arabic food world?
Khan: It feels like a really exciting moment. I feel like there’s now a movement actually led by Palestinian women to change the narrative on how Palestinians are seen in the food scene.
After I finished “The Saffron Tales,” which was so clearly about fighting the stereotypes of the Middle East (Khan is of Persian-Paskistani heritage), when I looked at where I could go next for another book, the Palestinian kitchen seemed to be the perfect place to go.
An outsider can play a very important role sometimes because the act of bearing witness is very important. And as an outsider, what I tried to do in this book is to just bear witness to these stories, and as a travel journalist that’s what I think my role is. I really believe that what lifts one of us in the Muslim community, it lifts all of us. The common thing we’re all facing at the moment is the Muslim world being demonized.
Assil:
(With) any sort of articulation of Palestinian identity or Palestinian culture, all of a sudden you’re out front. I knew I would be slightly controversial but I had no idea like how visceral the reaction (would be) from the right wing.
We’ve come a long way. I get (comments) here and there. You know, it’s scary; it brings you back to your 12-year-old self who’s dealt with anti-Arab racism. There was a time I didn’t say I was Palestinian because I was scared to say I was Palestinian. I think times have changed, and people are curious and people are questioning. I feel very fortunate to be in this time and have this platform. I’m just expressing who I am. I’m finding my true, authentic self. I feel like that’s something I’ve been deprived of for so many years.
Khan: It feels exciting to feel like things are actually changing. The success of your restaurant, the success of these books, it feels like we’re on the shift of something. I think it’s a generational thing here in the U.S.
Q: What do you wish people had a better understanding of in terms of the region and its food?
Khan: That it’s nuanced. That it’s not all the same. When you say Middle Eastern, you’re talking about so many different cultures. We’re not all the same. You’d never say that about Europeans.
Assil: We’re Christians. We’re Muslims. We’re Jews. We’re atheists. I think that is a big thing. I think that knowing the struggles we go through is connected to the struggles here in the U.S. It’s all connected. We’re not free until we’re all free. It’s true. To see the humanity in others is to see the humanity in yourself, in your own community. I think that’s what I’m trying to build through my food.
Sarah Fritsche is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sfritsche@sfchronicle.com Twitter/Instagram: @foodcentric