Lebanon with Anissa Helou
Food historian and author Anissa Helou explores Lebanon's culinary traditions, cultural identity, and the stories that live inside a nation's cuisine.
Why we picked this
Helou writes about Lebanese food the way a historian writes about a country — the cuisine becomes a way to understand migration, sectarianism, and resilience.
Anissa Helou is one of the foremost authorities on the cuisines of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean, with a body of work that treats food as a lens for understanding history, geography, and cultural identity. This evening at the Museum of Food and Drink focuses on Lebanon — its regional variations, its diaspora kitchens, and what a nation’s table reveals about its fractures and continuities.
Helou’s approach is scholarly but deeply personal; she grew up between Beirut and Syria, and her writing draws on family memory as much as archival research. For anyone interested in food as something more than recipes — as a form of cultural knowledge — this is a rare chance to hear from someone who’s spent decades mapping that territory.
Tickets required. Museum of Food and Drink, New York.