Louf, and authenticity in the face of annihilation.
Adapted from: the flavours of Palestine.
Forgive me, reader, for I have read the Google reviews of a restaurant before visiting. One in particular had caught my eye, with a liberal use of exclamation marks and a declarative opening: “Authentic Palestinian food!” The word usually makes me roll my eyes, but its invocation jostled me in this context. How do you… know? What does that word mean to an audience of people who have never, and likely will never, visit the place of reference? Or to those who have been forced to leave their homes?
“Sometimes I’m very conscious that I’m talking about food while my people are being starved,” Fadi Kattan admitted in an interview. He is the Franco-Palestinian chef behind London’s Akub and now Louf, which he co-founded with editor and writer Nicole Mankinen. I, too, am writing through the dissonance: the privilege of dining at a Palestinian restaurant against the mental backdrop of the genocide, the imminent famine that faces Gazans, the destruction of their agricultural land and vital resources, the international aid blockage, the bombing of museums and archives and schools, the deliberate and continued severance of a people from their land and culture. Yet that is also the reason why places like Louf must exist. These projects represent not just the act of preservation and remembrance, but the Palestinian right to look towards the future—to modernize, to grow, to dream.
Kattan has had a big year. Last spring, he released his debut cookbook, Bethlehem, which my friend A. got me for my birthday. It’s a beautiful homage to the food of his homeland, told in seasons that unfold to reveal the cast of characters behind these recipes: the artisans, the farmers, the grandmothers. It celebrates not the work of chefs—to be performed for the public, to impress—but the kind of alchemical cooking that happens behind closed doors, the flavors that are only made possible through personal relationships.
Louf, on a Thursday in December.
This intimacy was the first thing I noticed when J. and I walked up to Louf, a two-story house near Casa Loma that was once a private residence. The hostess greeted us cheerfully and led us up to our table on the second floor, which is separated into a dining room and a more private space for large family gatherings. The space is warm and informal, with wood tabletops, mismatched dining chairs, and terracotta tile—I felt not so much at home as invited into someone else’s, a friend you are getting to know through the honour of being cooked for.
When we asked our waiter for his recommendations, he replied with a list of the most popular dishes on the menu. This redirection, which happens more often than not at restaurants these days, frustrates me—but at Louf, it felt like as good of a starting point as any, a shorthand for the uninitiated palate. (I’ve only had self-declared Palestinian food a couple of times in my life—more, of course, if you count the “Israeli,” “Middle-Eastern,” and “Levantine” offerings available to us.) We ordered most of his suggestions, adjusted for appetite.
First, mkhalalat, a variety of pickles. At $14, I expected them to carry more flavour than vegetables in vinegar, but that’s precisely what they tasted like. A whisper of cardamom, perhaps.
The zaatar bread presented a drizzle of the beloved Palestinian spice mix in olive oil on a savory rye, spelt and fennel seed bread made by Evelyn’s Crackers, a local bakery that specializes in Ontario grains. In it, we see Kattan’s approach to Louf distilled: a deliberate choice to honour local artisans and Palestinian ingredients alike. “There’s no sense in me saying I’m fighting for Palestinian farmers,” he said in a Globe and Mail interview, “if I come to Toronto and disregard Ontario farmers and Indigenous producers.” Elsewhere on the menu, sorrel brightens and maple sweetens, in that way that only a Palestinian restaurant in Canada could.
“Observe who cares for the land vs who destroys it,” the Gazan poet Refaat Alareer quoted once, shortly before he was killed. Words I have thought about every day since.
Next came the small plates: dajaj pâté, a take on musakhan (sumac chicken baked with onions, warm spices, and served on a flatbread) that gives a nod to Kattan’s French heritage at the same time. The chicken here, stripped of its traditional seasoning, was served with a sweet onion-sumac jam. It reminded me of rillette: coarsely shredded protein bound and flavoured mostly by its own fat, of a subtlety that made it a second vehicle for the jam.
In contrast was the moutabal foul, delightful, declarative, a green fava bean spread made nutty and earthy with tahini, sumac, and an abundance of cumin seeds. To my surprise, the fava bean skins had been left in the dip, which contributed a welcome texture and chew. I like when food gives me something to do. As we scoop it up with the remaining pickles, J. declares that he would give up meat if all of his meals tasted like this. The large lamb shank arrives.
It was braised beautifully, giving way to a curious poke of the fork. According to the menu, the shank is made with mahlab (ground cherry stones that impart a floral-almond taste) and mastic gum (resinous, citrousy, pine-like). These nuances we could not discern at all, superseded by the game of the meat and the pungent yogurt it was served on, which I’d guess was made with goat’s milk. Nevertheless, the dish was very good, the richest of riches with its toasted nuts and jus. It played nicely with the smokey freekeh salad we ordered to go with it—cauliflower, caramelized onions, anisey bites of dried parsnip. Palestinian food, cooked on a winter’s day in Ontario. I’m not sure it’s what the Google reviewer meant, but it is the only form of authenticity I’m after: evidence of this time, in this place.
One month in, there were myriad signs of Louf’s growing pains: nervous waitstaff unacquainted with the intricacies of the menu, empty cocktail glasses that were never cleared from our table, bread sliced wonky and served misshapen. Some of the numbers on the menu also gave me pause: a gin cocktail, with apple, lemon and angostura, was $25; a glass of cabernet sauvignon from a winery in Kfar Yasif, $32. There is, of course, the cost of sourcing from Palestine, the difficulty, the rarity. Still, these prices will define the diners they’ll attract, and those they’ve closed their doors to.
I’m still grappling with the notion of impartiality in food criticism when all of the variables are constantly changing, still debating the merits of being equitable in a world that’s simply not. Should a foreign chef serving up dishes from an underrepresented culture be judged by the same metrics as the market he’s entering? Should what might be perceived as elevated home cooking command the same prices as fine dining if it worked harder to get here? Is all of this moot when we’re looking at a cuisine at risk of total annihilation? We want fairness, yes—but what is a fair price for helping a culture live on?
Louf
501 Davenport Road
Toronto