Couscous goes to UNESCO On December 16, 2020, couscous was recognized as UNESCO world cultural heritage. One of the objectives of the collective bid by Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Mauritania, was to reclaim ownership of this now global ethnic food for the region known as the Maghreb. It underlined the role of couscous as expression of cultural identity, highlighted its immemorial roots, its innumerable recipes, as well as the unique culinary techniques and know-how developed to produce it. Sold in the United States as “French couscous,” “Israeli couscous,” or “Moroccan pasta,” this Berber dish has become a profitable culinary commodity, and a fully industrialized, “traditional” food. In the face of gastronomic cosmopolitanism and capitalist globalization, the intangible cultural heritage distinction may safeguard cultural diversity or help revamp couscous’ symbolic capital at home and abroad. It supports countries long deprived by European colonization of statehood and monuments in their efforts to re-capture their past to preserve it for the future. Also at stake are economic interests, including revenues from tourism, cultural branding and access to the global culinary marketplace. While UNESCO’s recognition may contribute to claim “back” and reinvent traditions, I argue that it embodies the ultimate step in the commodification of this food, a process that begun with French colonization. The ambition behind the UNESCO application bears some resemblance to colonial extractive processes as the merchandising and “fossilization” of local foodways relies on the labor of unpaid, or underpaid, anonymous women, who are presented in folkloric ways in UNESCO application videos, while keeping hybrid, industrialized, present practices conveniently off-screen. Such a recognition also brings a non-negligible surge in cultural nationalism, a welcome distraction for shaky governmental authorities facing ongoing political instability at home--such as the 10th anniversary of the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia and the aftermath of the crack-down on the Hirak in Algeria—as well as their own regional conflicts, heightened by the reconfigurations of international alliances around Israel. Based on research conducted in Algiers in July 2019, on the visit of the "African Heritage is Back" exhibition (Algiers), and press materials, my paper explores the cultural and political stakes of couscous' recognition as (not so) intangible heritage.