A tale of two restaurateurs: the politics (or not) of food

We ate one night in Haifa, up north from Tel Aviv, on the coast. The next night we were in nearby Nazareth, eating again. The same central activity, but the two evenings could not have been more different. Both chef-owners were Palestinian and they both served us great food. What made the two experiences so polar opposite, though, was the chef-owners’ relationships to their food and customers, and what they saw as the purpose of having a restaurant in northern Israel.

Contrasting the two shows how different opinions can be about the role of food in the region and how strongly held these opinions are. After sitting at their respective tables, over the course of two nights, we walked away thinking two things. One was that both ways of seeing food in northern Israel, from a restaurateur’s point of view, are entirely valid; that we, as guests at their table, should restrict any judgements we might have to their food. The second was that we were getting to eat very, very well. This is the tale of two restaurateurs, then: one in Haifa and the other in Nazareth.