The sandwich: tomorrow's olive branch? In May, artists Jon Rubin, John Peña, and Dawn Welesky launched Conflict Kitchen, a gastronomic effort to further cultural understanding by offering up the fare of countries that are in conflict with the United States. They hope their take-out restaurant, which operates out of a modest storefront window in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood, inspires meaningful conversation on political and cultural issues in the respective country, ranging from women's rights to dating norms. The menu, which focuses on a different country every four months, began with Iran and currently offers a $5 homemade Iranian kubideh sandwich, or spiced ground beef wrapped in a leavened flatbread with onion, mint, and basil. Apart from prompting conversations with curious passersby, Conflict Kitchen also sparks wider discussion by hosting public events and talks. On June 5, it hosted a meal, broadcast over Skype, between 30 Tehran locals and 40 Pittsburgh residents.
TAP spoke with Rubin, an art professor at Carnegie Mellon University, about the idea behind the restaurant.
Conflict Kitchen is simultaneously an eatery, a social project, and a business. How did you come up with the concept?
I'm also director of a project called the Waffle Shop, which is adjacent to Conflict Kitchen and is a restaurant that has a live streaming radio show. Anyone who comes into the shop can be on the show. We were thinking about how we could create another form of public engagement, and we decided on a take-out restaurant. We were thinking about what would be an interesting model, and came upon this idea of selling food from countries we'd been in conflict with as a way of introducing Pittsburghers to the daily life and culture of these countries. It happened organically.
Why do you think food is an especially interesting way to explore conflict?
I think we've learned through running the Waffle Shop, where we essentially used waffles to get [customers] onto the talk show, which is something they might not normally be comfortable doing. Food is a great first step to engage people intellectually, by going through their senses. The history and life of a culture is embedded in its cuisine, so pretty much it's being served as a metaphor for the country, for the physical experiences and aspects of that country's culture. Every country has rituals around food, not only in its preparation but as a space for discussion. We think of it as being an organic introduction for people who might not be familiar with these countries.
There [are] restaurants all over the country, in every city, that introduce people to cultures. I think we're just taking that further, and we're also representing food and cultures that, at least in the city of Pittsburgh, are not represented. There are no Persian or Afghan restaurants in the city of Pittsburgh. That's another one of our criteria. There are other countries like Cuba, where people maybe have more of an introduction to their food. Again, food is a way to get people to engage in a conversation publicly that they might not be normally comfortable doing. A lot of people aren't going to just dig right into a political conflict.
How have people responded to the meals?
The response has been really great. It's been an honor. We probably have at least 50 people a day who have never had Persian food and don't know much about Iran. We actually also have a lot of local Iranians come by. We're really popular with the Iranian community, being the only Persian food in the area. The project seems to really have hit this collective nerve.
What countries are you planning to feature after Iran, and how did you select them?
Iran we chose obviously because it's a country we're in political conflict with at the moment. There's also an Iranian community here in Pittsburgh, and I have friends in Iran, so it was a great one for us to start out with. We had some familiarity with the culture and people. Our next country is going to be Afghanistan, which will happen in the fall. We're currently doing research on what the food will be and the types of programming and events we'll do. We're reaching out to people in the Afghan community here in the United States. After that, we'll probably be focusing on North Korea or Venezuela.
Do you learn about these countries as you go, or do you have background knowledge?
The whole project is frankly an opportunity for us to learn ourselves and engage in research and conversation. We always do a lot of reading, but we're also speaking to Iranians or Afghans, so we're trying to get most of our information from first-hand resources and a first-person perspective. The food is all wrapped in a custom-designed wrapper that has first-person perspectives on the life in that country and the culture. So we're all going through the same thing, and none of us are experts in these specific cultures.
How do you decide what foods to serve, and what is their significance? For example, how did you choose this sandwich out of the entire repertoire of Iranian cuisine?
We chose food in conversation with some friends -- one of my friends who lived in Iran and a friend here who is Iranian and lives in Pittsburgh. We were trying to think about street food and the balance between what the American palate would understand, but we also wanted to be authentic to Iranian street food. We wanted something that people could take with them and could travel with, and something that really carried the flavors and story of a culture.
How do you choose which conflicts to highlight? Is it more about official, larger-scale conflicts, or would you ever consider a figurative war, such as the war on drugs?
I think what we're looking at is country culture and daily life that people in the States are not very familiar with. I think North Korea, to the rest of the world, is a very mysterious place. The hope is to break through some of the general public rhetoric that we hear in the news that's very antagonistic, polarizing, and simplifying, and to try to open up a more nuanced experience and perception of people who live in these countries. We're probably playing against the dominant media representation of these countries and the cases that the governments build against each other, and how people get dragged into these political cases. In Iran, there are many criticisms against the policies of the government, just like how I don't always agree with the policies of my government. We're not trying to represent these countries based on governmental policies, but sort of based on the humanity and the daily life of the citizens of the country. We do talk about how conflicts within and without have affected these things as well.