Breaking Bread

Food is one of our greatest common grounds.

by Brian Howard

Back in March 2002, I wrote a guest opinion column for this paper. I'd just spent some time in Cairo, Egypt, and was caught off guard by the Egyptian sense of humor. Specifically, I was astonished that there was such a thing. We, the media-consuming subjects of the United States of Terror Threat Levels, are trained to view the Middle East as a strident, humorless place.

I was gladdened to learn that that's not necessarily the case. That folks in a city with daily calls to prayer could, yes, share a hearty laugh in ways not dissimilar from the ways my friends and I do. Humor is one of those great common grounds.

So is food. When we first heard that our staff photographer, Michael T. Regan, was taking a week to trek across Israel with a local chef, we weren't all that surprised. Regan's a traveler. A guy who uses all his vacation time and then some getting as far away from Two and Chestnut as possible.

But this was no ordinary Regan trip. He was tagging along with his friend, local chef/native Israeli Michael Solomonov, on menu-building exercises planned to familiarize the staff of his new restaurant, Zahav, with the cuisine of modern Israel.

Regan, who says he's "always wanted to wander the streets of Jerusalem armed with my Leica and a handful of black-and-white film," sensed this was a unique opportunity. The consummate photojournalist, Regan's mind went immediately to world affairs.

"I knew I wasn't going as a journalist covering the conflict, but as a photographer exploring the streets and landscapes through this culinary journey," says Regan. "The conflict in the Middle East may well be the defining story of our time, but I didn't feel at the center of world conflict while we traveled to kitchens across the land."

From what we hear, Regan ate a lot. Which is apparently unusual for him.

"When I'm immersed in photography, eating is an inconvenience — something I have to stop for to avoid crashing. Traveling with Mike, I didn't order a single meal myself for seven days. We'd enter a restaurant and I'd wander around photographing; when I'd return, the table would be decked out for us with colorful plates of varied cuisines."

What Regan experienced, what you'll experience when you read the story, and what Solomonov hopes to bring to his Society Hill restaurant, is not an answer to the conflict, but maybe something like a starting point for understanding. Solomonov's idea of Israeli cuisine combines Jewish and Arab elements. But it doesn't stop there. It draws on Iraqi, Moroccan, Bulgarian and Russian cultures — all the puzzle pieces that make up Israel today.

While Regan was in the country, "the tragedy continued as rockets were being fired from Gaza toward the Israeli town of Sderot.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

Our food editor, Drew Lazor, was drawn to the behind-the-scenes nature of the trip. "Cooking has a built-in mystique in that it's a largely closed-door art form," he figures. "When's the last time a chef invited you to poke around the kitchen while he sliced and sauced?"

Beyond that, Lazor sees the expedition as having a larger purpose: "Solomonov seems genuinely dedicated to sharing his culture through his food — it's proof that good cooking is communicating."

A plate of hummus, falafel or even the extraordinary-sounding Sabich with "Chicago Bulls sauce" is unlikely to nudge the peace process along. But it's nice, if maybe naïve, to think that if everyone could just sit down and nosh together — if they could just agree on one thing, say, that this foie gras kabob is worth dying for, maybe they'd realize that other things aren't.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)