“A War Could be Going on Outside, and You Wouldn’t Even Know”

Abstract

This article is based on four months that I spent working as a chef at an Israeli restaurant in London. I first explore how restaurants craft nationalist narratives through food and then interrogate the political consequences of those narratives. My argument unfolds over the course of a meal, in which each dish comes to represent different aspects of Israeli identity. Each section begins with the “script” that chefs and waiters recite as they present dishes to diners. This article explores the curiosities and silences embedded in the restaurant’s de-politicized version of Israeli identity based on a fantasy of the country that erases war and the occupation of the Palestinian people from the narrative. I argue that there is a harm by omission to this recasting of Israeli history and current reality on the ground, and expose how food, specifically in highly stylized restaurants, can be used to create national narratives, particularly in diaspora.