Pop-up café’s food for thought

EVERYONE understands the power of a feast to banish bad feelings and bring people together, but how far can the uniting power of a shared meal go? A pop-up café created last year is returning, to show that good food can help to resolve conflicts.

The Conflict Café, organised by the NGO International Alert, will serve food from the areas where it runs peace-building projects, including Syria, Nepal, Colombia, Armenia and Turkey. The month-long series of events starts with Syrian cuisine.

Charlotte Onslow, who works for International Alert, has adapted the tools used by the charity’s work overseas to operate in the café, which is near Waterloo station in London: “We want to make sure you don’t talk only to the person you came with, so we have long tables and materials on them that generate question,” she said.

Relations between Turkey and Armenia have been tense ever since the Armenian genocide of 1915, and International Alert recently sent ethnographic researchers to Gyumri, the capital of Shirak province in Armenia, and to Kars in Turkey to interview women about their favourite recipes.

They found that many of the recipes were similar to those across the border and certain ingredients had the same name, such as un, meaning flour.

They then swopped recipes between the women. – The Independent on Sunday