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The foods they carried: The journey of Lebanese cuisine to North America
Abstract
Middle Eastern cuisine today has become a fully globalized corporate phenomenon. One need only point to the rows of hummus, flavoured and “original”, in North American grocery chains to see this fact. However the voyage of Middle Eastern cuisine abroad is not simply the product of today’s corporate marketing. Rather it is the result of over a century of migration, which carried cuisines of the Middle East, along with its peoples, from the Arabic-speaking lands of the former Ottoman Empire and its successor states to Europe and the Americas. This paper examines the relationship between cuisine, memory and space among Lebanese migrant communities in North America in the second half of the 20th century. Food preparation and consumption shaped and perpetuated migrants’ memories of their homeland, in both private and public ways. In the private space of the home, food evoked the family’s links, past or ongoing, to the geographic space of the homeland. In the communal sphere, cuisine provided collective access to memories of home among members of migrant Lebanese communities, and, importantly, a means collectively to recreate and reenact those memories. As communities became more entrenched, food became a key means for presenting the far-off geographic space of home to a North American audience, particularly when communities attained the critical mass needed to support Lebanese grocery stores and restaurants. The case studies of particular grocery stores, delis or bakeries usefully illustrate the powerful links between cuisine, memory and space among migrant communities in North America. Commercial establishments such as “Adonis” in Montreal, “Sahadi” in NYC, and "Neomonde" in Raleigh NC all became hubs of the Lebanese migrant communities in those cities and the surrounding regions. This paper takes an historical approach in examining the role played by these establishments in anchoring community memories of home, reenacting those memories, and mediating them in the wider North American urban context.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Lebanon
North America
Sub Area
None