Re-imagining a farmers' market in Beirut
Souk el Tayeb is on the cutting edge of community for Beirutis and beyond
Today I want to introduce you to a friend of mine from years ago, a community leader in Beirut Lebanon, a man named Kamal Mouzawak.
I’m proud to know Kamal and his team, and to have spent time with them after the horrific 2020 explosion that rocked Beirut and destroyed so many lives. The World Central Kitchen team, who arrived in Beirut to help with the recovered, joined up with Kamal’s team at Tawlet, a kitchen in the city serving foods from around Lebanon (more about that later), along with our mutual friend Aline Kamakian—a brilliant chef, food writer, and culinary advocate. Together, we worked to feed the people of Beirut who were the ones cleaning up the streets. It was a difficult time, but also an amazing one, to see the incredible efforts of Beirutis helping their neighbors get back on their feet, to clean up their neighborhoods, and to make sure they were all fed.
Kamal has for many years been a leader in the community. In 2004 he started a farmers market in Beirut called Souk el Tayeb, working with farmers from around the rural areas of the country to reach the people of the city. From there his mission has expanded…well, why am I telling you, when I could let Kamal do it? My team had a moment to talk to him recently, since Kamal and Souk el Tayeb were the recipients of a grant from my Longer Tables Fund—specifically to support a new vision for the market, transforming it into a community space. I am so thrilled to be able to support my dear friend Kamal in his work to bring fresh produce to more of his community.
So friends, now I want to give the floor to the super thoughtful Kamal:
Longer Tables: First of all…what is Souk el Tayeb, and what is Tawlet?
Kamal: The whole story has been an evolution since the beginning, in 2004.
Souk el Tayeb is what we call a farmers’ market and Tawlet we call a farmers’ kitchen (“Souk el Tayeb” means “good market” and “tawlet” means “table” in Arabic). That naming is intentional, to stress the fact that this is not another store, and it’s not another restaurant. It's not about selling vegetables. It's not about cooking food and serving food in a restaurant or in whatever we want to call it. It's about changing the world, making the world a better place.
And it was for people to understand is that food is not just a commodity that you buy on a supermarket shelf but something that someone planted, produced, cooked, transformed—and it's an exchange between you and him or her through money, but the idea is Why not meet the producers of our food? It was a move for farmers to come from rural to urban in order to be where there's a demand and purchasing power. It was about farmers coming to meet people who would buy their produce.
Then we thought, why does this only have to be rural people coming to the cities? So in 2007 we started to have these little dinners and celebrations in towns and villages across the country, to celebrate the local foods and local celebrations. Let’s think about a farmer from a small village that grows very good cherries. So, we're going to create an event around cherries, a celebration of cherries. At the same time, we're going to do cherry picking, understand better about the buy cherries, and do eco-historical visits of the village and the region. At the same time, at noon, we need to eat something. We're not going to eat regular food. What are we going to eat? We're going to eat the typical food of that village. How can we eat it? It's not, professional chefs with big egos who are going to cook it in their own restaurants. It's the farmer's mother, aunt, making domestic cuisine—and domestic cuisine is cooked by women. So, we started identifying the cooks and these cooks came each on one big plate of this typical dish of that village or region. and it was the launch of the event and these lunches started to have a big success.
Then that idea evolved—why were we only doing that once a year in each location? Could we bring those women to Beirut to cook their dishes in the city? This is how we created Tawlet in 2009, the farmers’ kitchen. A Tawlet in Beirut with women coming from all over Lebanon! Every day, a different woman from a different region would host a buffet as if she was hosting us at her own home. So when we started with the Tawlet in Beirut it was a national space for women from all over Lebanon. Then people started coming from different Lebanese region from the north and from the south and saying I want a Tawlet in my region. So we went to the south and did specific Tawlets for the south, and in the north, these farmers kitchens with the typical recipes and the typical ingredients of each region.
Then we thought, as we visited this regions: Why can't we enjoy a little bit more and sleep in these regions? This is how in 2015 we created another project which is Beit, which means home—that’s the bed and breakfast project. So you go there you sleep in a traditional architecture and you eat the traditional food of that place.
So this is how it evolved from one thing to another.
It’s an amazing progression. What else have you been able to accomplish through these projects?
One major goal was around the moments of Syrian migration. We started working with the migrants around something that reminds them of their own country, their cuisine. So we started hosting cooking trainings with the Syrian refugees, and then supported them to find work and create income. We did the same with migrant workers coming to Lebanon from elsewhere as well. So we’ve always been keeping our eyes and ears open, seeing what is the problem and trying to find an adequate solution for the problem through a very simple means: food. Another instance is with Palestinian refugees: we started working with the Palestinian refugees who are in Lebanon since a very long time. It’s an easy way to support these communities who are often put on the margins of society. When we host a lunch and we tell the greater community, There's a very nice Palestinian lunch today, people come and eat and it becomes easier for them to start acknowledging the other and meeting the other through their cuisine.
How has Lebanese food culture changed since you started Souk el Tayeb?
Let's say in 2004 it was shameful to have freekeh, the green smoked wheat that’s very very traditional and typical in the south. I’m not from the south, so I never heard of freekeh in my childhood. So you would have to have a relative or know someone in the south to have heard of it or to have tasted. Twenty years ago, it was shameful to serve freekeh at a fancy dinner because it was traditional and it was the kind of tradition we're ashamed of. The same with kibbeh nayyeh, a raw meat dish that’s very typical. But 10 years ago I think it completely changed. Now it's become shameful not to have freekeh or raw meat on your fancy dinner—people started to be proud of their heritage rather than to be ashamed of it. We’ve come a long way for sure.
What are you planning to do with the grant from the Longer Tables Fund, and what is the future for Souk el Tayeb?
So our current location is wonderful, we have both the market and our offices at the same place under one roof. But we still have problems: first of all, it is very very alive and lively on a Saturday morning. It's a wonderful location in the center of town. But then again, there are activities only on Saturday morning and the souk space is dead the rest of the week. So we said, guys, this is a problem. It needs to be alive every single day. It's like we have a wonderful opportunity and you're not using it.
But much more important than this—we’re always reflecting and reconsidering—we remembered our initial vision of changing the world. And we said We're doing a wonderful farmers market on Saturday morning. The other projects that we created in the regions are doing much better, but the one in Beirut feels outdated. So are we doing the right thing or is there a problem somewhere?
So we understood that the main problem is that the space is walled. We had created a walled project physically and mentally—in reality and in an abstract way. And we weren't communicating a lot with the neighborhood, our environment, the city and the country. And we said This is the main problem and what we need to do is just to break these walls and to create something different.
But since 2019, when Lebanon went through (and is still going through) economic collapse, the gap between rich and poor is humongous. With such a humongous gap, the market ended up addressing itself to a middle class and a richer class population, which made it feel too exclusive. So we said No we need to break this. So this is why I told you the story from the beginning. We assessed at what's the human need because what are we actually doing?
I don't believe in saving the environment—for me, there is no environmental problem. It doesn’t exist because when you say there is an environmental problem, it's like you’re saying that the environment is sick, it's the environment’s problem, it's not your problem. What? The environment and nature has no problem at all. It's perfect. It perfectly balances itself. But the problem is you and me because we are the ones who are destroying it. So at the end of the day, it's only a human problem.
Also, there's no economic problem. The problem is the greed of some people. So it's always a human issue. It's always about human greed and the solution to that is proper human development. Human development is not for the poor people only. It's for everybody—I’d argue it should mainly be for the greediest because they have to develop into understanding how important it is for each of us to be taking care of everyone else, to realize that if the society is good, the economy is good too.
So since 2019 there has been this huge gap and we have been more and more exclusive and at one point we were called “the rich people's market” and it was this huge alarm—we needed to break this pattern. How can we break it? We need to open up, to break the walls. If we're staying here, we're breaking the walls and we're opening up physically and mentally.
And then if we’re opening up our space, creating something new, why should it be alive half a day a week only? It should be alive every day, all week long, for different activities. It's not only for a big farmers market on Saturday, it’s to bring the old people from the neighborhood to play backgammon which is a very typical game in Lebanon and in the region. It's to use it as a platform to do environmental discussions and movies and talks. It's for book reading. it's like the agora in the Roman times where we come and we sing and we evolve together and we eat and we drink, whatever it is. It's a continuously living space serving the community and the city and the country.
That’s our vision, that’s our plan.
What should I try if I came to visit you and the farmers of Souk el Tayeb?
So, I think as anywhere else, what you should try is definitely a taste of place. If you're going to Beirut to try a cronut as they call it, what’s the point? There are a lot of places in Lebanon that will copy the successes from trends around the world, but why would I come from New York after a 15 hour flight and a $3,000 ticket to find the same things that I find in New York or in Paris or anywhere else.
So, it's definitely a sense of place, what's wonderful about the farmers market is there are tastes of place from all over Lebanon. So, a first taste of place would definitely be za’atar. That's a product that you would be buying and taking with you when you travel home. Za’atar is a mix of our local oregano, along with sumac and sesame seeds and salt. And you're going to eat it on site, at Souk el Tayeb, with man’oushe. The man’oushe is almost like a pizza which we eat in the morning with the za’atar and olive oil over it. Then we just flip it like a sandwich. We hold it and that's our breakfast. So I would say if there is one national flag above Lebanon, it's definitely za’atar. So what you’re eating on site is the man’oushe, and you’re taking some za’atar home with you—these are tastes of place, that’s what you need to try.
José here again. I can’t say enough good about Kamal. You can see here how thoughtful he is, caring for his community and his people, for the environment, and doing everything he can to create spaces for his communities to thrive. That’s why I’m so thrilled to support his work through the Longer Tables Fund. Don’t you want to go visit now? I will see you there for man’oushe!
This is beautiful. It is the way Americans could behave if the negativity of the 🍊 Rump and cohorts would stop sowing hate and division. Bravo to you and your partners in Lebanon.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I adore this man. So much humanity inside his heart.