{"id":165,"date":"2018-06-24T16:06:49","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T16:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/globalreporting2018\/?p=165"},"modified":"2019-05-16T12:10:47","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T12:10:47","slug":"chefs-break-stereotypes-at-food-fest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/globalreporting2018\/chefs-break-stereotypes-at-food-fest\/","title":{"rendered":"Chefs break bread and stereotypes at food fest"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Emily Spalding<\/em><\/p>\n

ATHENS, Greece<\/strong> \u2014 In a city where Greek salad, feta cheese and souvlaki dominate menus, restaurants here were in for a distinct dining experience when six restaurants swapped their pita for injera.<\/p>\n

During the third week in June, Athens restaurants opened their kitchens to accomplished chefs who also happened to be refugees. They prepared meals from their native countries — including Eritrea, Syria and Afghanistan — as part of the Refugee Food Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Launched two years ago by French citizens Marine Mandrila and Louis Martin, today the festival has won an international audience, with 15 cities participating across three continents. \u00a0The list includes Athens and the nearby island city of Mytilene, perhaps the most striking locations given their position at the center of the European refugee crisis.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sudha Nair, the organizer of the festival, has been involved since its conception. She also said she has worked to contain the refugee crisis \u201clong before it became a crisis,\u201d as a member of a number of media organizations. \u00a0In her eyes, food is a vehicle for unifying cultures and people, and can help tell stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of these refugees left home with just a suitcase. Probably a suitcase full of memories of home cooking, of grandmothers and recipes they shared, and trips to the bazaars and souks,\u201d Nair said. \u00a0\u201c[With the festival], we wanted to evoke some of that: to show that the best way to understand others is to break bread together, is to share stories around a table.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nair explained that in addition to wanting to break stereotypes and introduce new and interesting cuisines to restaurant goers, the objective of the festival was \u201cto integrate these chefs\u201d \u2014 many of which were professional chefs back home \u2014 \u201cprofessionally in Greek society.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2017, five chefs and five restaurants took part in Athens. \u00a0In 2018, four of those five chefs are employed as chefs in Greece, with the other chef relocating outside of Greece, according to Nair.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Chef Seinat Neftalem<\/p><\/div>\n

On June 20, Seinat Neftalem was the visiting chef at Bluefish Athens<\/a>, a seafood restaurant in the Athens neighborhood of Monastiraki. \u00a0A migrant from Dekemhare, Eritrea, who has been in Greece since 2012, Neftalem has a passion for cooking and her native cuisine that was apparent in her four-course meal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a refugee, so I just want to represent my country,\u201d Neftalem said. \u00a0\u201cWhen I was a kid, my mother was a good cooker, so she was able to teach me how to make delicious food.\u201d<\/p>\n

This event marks Neftalem\u2019s fourth time in a festival, though she remains unemployed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dream is to open my own restaurant so that I will be able to survive and to live,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Janet Besir, who owns Bluefish with husband and chef George Economidis, learned of the festival from Nair, and was excited to participate, since she is half Tunisian.\u00a0Besir plans to continue working with migrant chefs after the festival.<\/p>\n

Nair hopes the food\u00a0will encourage diners to \u201cseek something different, not just in terms of taste, but they\u2019ll seek restaurants that go beyond the ordinary, that are actually doing something and contributing to make a difference in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nair said she has visited more than 20 refugee camps and found the residents have little say in their diets.<\/p>\n

\"\"

A course at Bluefish Athens<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt upset me that there was someone else cooking for them. One of the first complaints at every single camp or every single place where you had refugee[s] being housed was \u2018we hate the food,\u2019 \u201d Nair said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel when you are displaced from your home \u2026 and you also take away food from that equation, then you are really robbed of your dignity in some ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nair recently returned from the island of Lesbos, where nearly 100 refugees<\/a> arrive each day. She explained how she felt inspired by the locals who have welcomed the migrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the economic crisis that you have in Greece and despite the challenges that Greeks themselves face, I think they\u2019ve been extremely embracing of the fact that these refugees are human beings as well, that they had lives, they had professions before,\u201d Nair said. \u00a0\u201cThe idea of the Refugee Food Festival was really to show that. To say that they\u2019re not parasites, they\u2019re not taking away from your system, they\u2019re actually giving back.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Emily Spalding ATHENS, Greece \u2014 In a city where Greek salad, feta cheese and souvlaki dominate menus, restaurants here were in for a distinct dining experience when six restaurants swapped their pita for injera. During the third week in June, Athens restaurants opened their kitchens to accomplished chefs who also happened to be refugees.<\/p>\n

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