[Sca-cooks] Middle Eastern Food

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Dan Phelps wrote:
>Was written:
>  > By the way, East Jerusalem, the arabic part,
>  > where I stay, have very few restaurants at all.
>  > It seems the arab culture rather eat their meals at home.
>  > Ana
>
>Not to incite a political discussion but I suspect than, in the location
>cited, this has to do more with politics and perceived personal risk than
>cultural preference.

Actually Ana's observance tends to be rather true beyond the borders 
of Israel and has nothing to do with East Jerusalem in particular. 
After all, the Israelis eat in restaurants...

Cafes appear to be popular throughout the Arabic world. They are, 
however, generally "free" of women. This is not 100 per cent the 
case, as "the younger generation" is often more mixed in the biggest 
cities, in part because they tend to be better educated and have been 
exposed more to certain aspects of Western society. Even so women are 
only present at certain times of day and in certain neighborhoods. 
But in smaller cities or towns and more "conservative" neighborhoods, 
cafes are pretty much the exclusive purview of males.

Restaurants in many Near Eastern Muslim countries are for tourists 
for the most part. These come in two or three price ranges - not very 
expensive by tourist standards, but locals definitely don't eat in 
them - to very expensive, where one may well find good food, but 
where one is not likely to eat 3 meals a day. There are also some 
restaurants which are aimed at the wealthy of the country - these are 
expensive and usually serve European, not regional food, since the 
rich local diners can get that at home.

For example, I was in Morocco (granted, not a purely Arabic country) 
with my daughter December 2000-January 2001. Morocco has a rich and 
complex cuisine, quite delicious (depending on the cook, of course), 
with much regional and seasonal variation.

But as a traveller there, i found that it was, in fact, very 
difficult to find restaurants that didn't have the same limited "menu 
touristique". We travelled all over - started in Rabat, North to 
Tangier (where we ate Indian food), drove over the Atlas Mountains in 
January (scary on a 1-1/2 lane icy road when a big semi is comin' 
atcha), Southeast to Merzouga, West to Essouaira. While the food 
varied in quality (from "ok, but only ok", to "pretty bad, but not 
so's it would make one sick"), the menus were pretty much the same. 
The only places that served more complex and well-cooked dinners were 
expensive restaurants for up-scale tourists, such as the Fez "palace" 
restaurants.

Fact is, Moroccans don't eat in restaurants much. Those travelling 
from the village to a town or a souq to sell, for example, a giant 
sack of wool, will need to buy something to eat, but it's 
inexpensive, sort of snacky type food - a joint of roast chicken, 
hard-cooked eggs and potatoes, etc. Mostly they eat at home. Rich 
Moroccans, when dining out, tend to eat in up-scale European-style 
restaurants. There are a few small restaurants for locals, but again, 
mostly men (and one we at in was not too good).

The only places that get a lot of business are cafes. And bear in 
mind that you rarely see women in these places. The only places i saw 
any Moroccan women eating was MacDonalds, and this was in Rabat, a 
"college town" and the capital of Morocco.

I'm not a weenie, and my daughter and i are fluent in French and she 
knows a fair bit of Moroccan Arabic. I bought street food in many 
towns, ate in the night market in the Jmaa el-Fna in Marrakesh, 
wandered through the medinas buying snacks off wandering vendors. 
Women did buy street food - which they eat at home (and women don't 
go out alone, although several women will often go out together).

One place we really liked was a "carry-out" sandwich shop in 
Chefchaouen, which was *extremely* busy and the customers were 
Moroccans. The sandwiches were not like American sandwiches - i 
assume they have a French or Spanish forbear (since this was 
previously a Spanish area). Some families sent *very* young boy 
children to pick up sandwiches to bring home. But there were no women 
working there or shopping there. The places where women worked and 
shopped were bakers' shops and food sources in the market places in 
the medinas, but they took food home to cook. There were quite a few 
women working and shopping in the bakery/patisserie in Fez that may 
well be the best in all Morocco, but again, the female shoppers were 
not eating there, but taking purchases home.

 From talking with other travellers, i hear similar things about 
Syria, although Beirut Lebanon may be quite different. Also, big 
cities are often very different from small towns and villages.

I don't know about Turkey or Iran, neither of which is Arabic...

Anahita