As some of the most visible Palestinian establishments in American cultural life, Palestinian restaurants have found themselves thrust into the spotlight in a new way over the last nine months of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
Some have rejoiced at finally being able to list themselves on Google as Palestinian, as opposed to the more vague Middle Eastern or Mediterranean, and found a new customer base in the form of people looking to demonstrate their solidarity. Others have found themselves suddenly flooded with one-star reviews designed to tank their online rankings, been robbed, or even received death threats for putting their Palestinian identities on display.
Against this highly polarized backdrop, many Palestinian American restaurateurs are wrestling with the power and limits of food as a cultural change-maker, especially when reading reports of Israeli settlers destroying aid trucks while a famine in Gaza rages resulting from what aid officials have described as “manmade starvation”.
The adage that “food brings people together” is oft repeated, but sometimes naively applied. The Gaza Cookbook author Laila El-Haddad once skewered the attitude that a shared love for chickpeas between Israelis and Palestinians could somehow erase the need for deeper conversations about peoples’ fundamental rights as “hummus kumbaya”.
Despite that tension, many Palestinian restaurateurs in the US are trying to leverage their position in hospitality to tell humanizing stories about Palestinians, raise funds to feed and evacuate Palestinians on the ground, advocate before elected officials, and more. The Guardian spoke to three of them about their experience feeding people, and representing Palestine to them, over the last nine months.
Kamal Kamal
Co-founder of Baba’s Pantry
Kansas City, Missouri
My dad opened a couple businesses [in the past]. Formerly, he always tried to operate under the guise of Mediterranean or broadly Middle Eastern, but never identified as Palestinian, and I understand completely why. This is what he was accustomed to when he got here in the 70s. You were not supposed to be outwardly, proudly Palestinian, because the idea is that you were instantly associated with violence. That disownment of Palestinian identity was rampant for a very long time. I did not see a lot of Palestinian restaurants growing up.
We opened Baba’s Pantry in 2021 not knowing what was gonna happen. We just said: “This is probably my dad’s last chance; he’s older now. Let’s just be Palestinian. It’s time. Let’s make what we make and just own it.” Part of owning that narrative was understanding that we are part of a greater diaspora. Our family is Palestinian and we, for many reasons, have to live outside of Palestine. What does that look like in our cuisine and our culture? We don’t have access to certain ingredients, and the food is not going to be the same as it would be at home. We decided to embrace that, because that’s the reality of us living here.
We’ve been received really well overall. I think that’s because my dad has been a part of the community for a long time. He was one of the first people to bring hummus to Kansas City, so a lot of people know him.
I don’t think we’re fully understood yet, but it gives me optimism that we’re being seen just a little bit more, because I think humanization is a big factor of being Palestinian. We’re not necessarily given the benefit of the doubt that we’re human; we have to prove that we’re human.
Food plays a role in that because it’s a direct nourishment of the body and soul. When you serve food, people walk away with a better understanding and a connection that they would have never had. When you sit down and you have someone’s cuisine and see the work, thought and history put into it, you cannot not be affected.
Luaey Issa
Co-founder of Holy Buckets
Bridgeview, Illinois
We are of Palestinian descent, my business partner and I, and we are in a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood [outside Chicago, sometimes referred to as “Little Palestine”]. I go to Palestine every year; I have grandfathers, aunts, uncles there. I love it there, I love the culture.
Our restaurant has had death threats, we’ve gotten people attacking us on social media, because we’re very vocal in our stance on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We had a huge donation jar with several thousand dollars for Gaza and somebody came and stole it. A lot of people on Google are attacking us, giving us fake reviews. All while we have to sit there, as business owners and as Arab Americans living in the United States, and watch videos of newborn babies [in Gaza] dying of starvation. It’s been a struggle, but we’re still here, we’re moving forward.
We’ve done several campaigns. We did one for three months where every single dollar of pizza sales was 100%, donated – not profits, sales. We called it Pizza for Palestine. For the month of Ramadan, we donated 100% of our total sales. We’ve had student organizations [from student encampments] reach out to us and say: “We have people that need food,” so we’ll pass out a few hundred meals to students standing in solidarity with Gaza. We’re trying to do everything that we can.
I’ve always been a big advocate of bringing people together, and what brings people together more than food? Food is the key to a lot of people’s hearts. If somebody likes your product, and it’s good, you have a little bit of influence there. We’re just trying to use that influence as much as we can.
It may not have a direct effect. To think that we’re going to influence change overnight is ridiculous. But you’ve got to start somewhere. In order to get people to understand, you have to educate them. The local Arab restaurant may not need to do anything because they’re getting nothing but Arab customers. But my platform, since we sell fried chicken and pizza, is so diverse, I get everybody. People want to feel like they’re part of a process, but there is no process if nobody initiates anything. So we’re initiating as much as we can, to spread awareness and draw in all kinds of people through food.
Reem Assil
Founder of Reem’s California
San Francisco, California
Because we were one of the first nationally acclaimed restaurants proudly saying our food is Palestinian, we had a bit of a head start to deal with anti-Palestinian sentiment. We dealt with crazy rightwing backlash right around the time Trump got elected. It was very scary, and I could have just keeled over and become the palatable, nice Arab. But I was like, “No, if I’m going to open this restaurant, I can’t hide my Palestinian identity,” and part of the identity is resisting an occupation and apartheid that has killed my family and dispossessed them for generations.
I’m Palestinian-Syrian; my mom is from Gaza. My grandmother’s side is originally from Yaffa, which is now modern-day Tel Aviv. She was displaced in 1948, so she experienced the Nakba and became a refugee in Gaza. My mom was born there. And they were displaced in 1967; they relocated to Beirut. We’ve lost more than 40 members of our family, and are still in very sporadic contact with them at this point. The situation on the ground has gotten so unbearable. Starvation is the big issue right now for them.
[Myself and some others working in hospitality] started Hospitality for Humanity [a coalition of hospitality workers advocating for a ceasefire and an end to US funding of Israel, among other things], because we believe we have a role to play and changing hearts and minds, and educating people about what’s happening over there. This is not [just] a foreign policy issue. There is a manmade, engineered famine that’s happening.
At Reem’s, we’ve been doing write-ins where people write to their elected officials. We’ve also held “eat-in teach-ins”, where we’ve been hosting these joint movement dinners with different communities. We had a Black Palestinian solidarity dinner here in the Bay, a Palestinian Indigenous solidarity dinner in New York, a Palestinian and Cambodian dinner. If we see our struggles as joint, then it becomes easier to understand what we need to do together.
I’ve seen in my lifetime that policy does follow culture. Restaurants serve as third places in communities between home and their work. And for better or worse, there is a kind of celebrity culture where people are looking to chefs to tell them what to do. We have a really powerful role to play in the food and hospitality sector.
There are many ways that we could still be pushing. And it’s gonna take time, but I really do believe in the power of food to build strong, resilient community. Everybody eats, everybody thinks about food, and at a time where food is one of the central issues, that’s a way to speak to the hearts of people of conscience. I don’t know what the tipping point will be to push people into being a little bit more courageous to speak out, but I think food is a powerful way to do that.
