Cooking without borders in Marseille – Andrea de Georgio

If the world were one big kitchen, there would be no more room for hatred, xenophobia, racism or wars. The organizers of the Refugee * Food Festival (Rff) 2021 are convinced of this, scheduled from 15 to 20 June in Paris, Marseille, Strasbourg, Lille, Lyon, Rennes, Nantes, Dijon, Bordeaux and Montpellier. Ten French cities in which more than 65 restaurateurs – from luxurious starred restaurants to small neighborhood bistros – determined to commit themselves to a cause, lend their stoves to refugee cooks from the four corners of the planet. The ambitious goal of this “greedy and supportive festival”, born in 2016 from an idea of ​​the Food Sweet Food association, is to dispel the blanket of prejudices that still surrounds those who come from afar. And, in doing so, offering refugee cooks an opportunity for professional integration and social inclusion, making the Western public discover new hybrid flavors, unusual frontiers of taste.

Tuesday 15 June, 6 pm On Cours Julien, a pulsating artery in the heart of Marseille, the comings and goings are incessant. In this strange spring that smells of summer, after classes or work, hundreds of people gather in the pedestrian area, sitting on the ground around the fountain, on the steps of the staircase or in the shade of the trees. The sun, the true constant of this crowded Mediterranean port, warms the dozens of terraces of the bars and restaurants that occupy the square, besieged by hungry and thirsty patrons, tired of the long lockdown. In fact, in France, all the venues were closed to the public from March 2020 until last May 19th, when the first gradual reopening took effect. At first only the open spaces, as in Italy. Then, from 9 June, also inside, but with half the capacity. Now a little light can be glimpsed at the end of the tunnel: from June 17 there is no longer the obligation to use masks outside, from June 20 the curfew ends at 11 pm, from June 30 bars and restaurants will be open with no more limitations of places and to follow the reopening of theaters, concert halls, discos.

On the whole “Cours Jù”, as the Marseillais call it, tonight there is only one terrace still empty. It is that of La Baleine, a historic and atypical Marseille restaurant with an adjoining cinema room that offers committed foreign films. “Local food and international cinema” is the formula of the place. Flyers with the Refugee * Food Festival logo rest on the outdoor tables, under the umbrellas: a black asterisk with one of the bars in the shape of a fork, on a yellow background. The same logo that, in the form of a sticker, are worn by the volunteers who wander in front of La Baleine, awaiting the imminent arrival of the diners. Everything is booked for the opening night of the RFF 2021, which this week, after a year of hiatus, returns to Marseille for the fifth time. “For this special post covid edition, everything must be perfect”, worries Fanny Borrot, regional coordinator of the Rff 2021 from Paris. Iris Liberty, young coordinator of the project in Marseille, echoes her: “It was a difficult year for everyone, even more so for restaurateurs and refugees. We are confident: it will be a success “.

In keeping with the spirit of the project, the launch dinner menu features a selection of mezzeh Syrians, conceived and cooked by Asieh Kentar, refugee mother of three daughters, and revisited by the chef of La Baleine Xavier Maisonnier to give a “French touch” to traditional Syrian dishes. The dinner is accompanied by the screening, in the hall, of two themed films: Soury by Christophe Schwitzer, who recounts the encounter between a young Syrian and a gruff French farmer who produces wine (Yves Morard, present at the evening); is Bandits’ words by Jean Boiron-Lajous, on popular resistance and welcome from below in Val Roia, on the border between France and Italy. Between one film and the next, the public tastes in terrace zucchini stuffed with peppers and Cabillaud (a particular breaded fish), special tabbouleh, fattoush, kébé and Syrian sweets, under the happy gaze of the cook Asieh. Protected by a long blue caftan and black hijab, this shy and proud woman, who has known war, relentlessly seeks the reassuring gaze of her husband, seated at a table with two pairs of French friends. Having arrived in France “for four years and three months”, after having had to abandon her law studies due to the conflict, Asieh participated in training in catering, for a month she has been on an internship in the kitchen of a nursing home in Marseille and has opened its own home catering service, Chef Oriental, which thanks to the participation in the festival hopes to be able to develop.

“Any city in the world can embrace the idea and host its own edition of the RFF: it is enough for a group of volunteers or an association to be the bearer of the festival’s ideals and respect its guidelines,” says Iris Liberty. “Before the pandemic, the Refugee * Food Festival was also held in several foreign cities, such as Cape Town, New York, San Francisco, Strasbourg, Madrid, Athens, Amsterdam, Brussels and Bologna. This year, given the particular moment, we have decided to focus on France ”. “Next year, however, we plan to reopen the editions abroad”, adds Fanny Barrot, who announces: “We will also return to Bologna, where in 2018 the festival has received great appreciation”. In addition to lunches, aperitifs, dinners and street-food, the busy program of the Rff 2021 in Marseille offers cooking workshops from around the world, the sale of special Ethiopian and Syrian cheeses and Afghan bread (produced by the Dairy of Marseille and the Boulangerie Pain Pan, in collaboration with refugee chefs) and awareness-raising cycles in schools. “RFF is much more than a festival. It is a global project to fight against stereotypes, in favor of the professional integration of refugee people in restaurants and a healthier and more diversified diet “, read the posters posted in front of the ten participating restaurants, including the historic Les Eaux de Mars, the innovative café-theater-bistro Opéra Zoizo and the Couvent Levat, a former convent with an immense garden, city gardens, residences and artists’ studios.

In these various cult places of the Marseille culinary tradition, in addition to Asieh, the following will perform: Enes, a very young self-taught Turkish cook; Roza, who wants to open “the first Uyghur restaurant in Marseille”; Veronica, a Venezuelan cook at an asylum canteen; Homa, who learned to cook with his grandmother and aunt in Afghanistan; Souleyman and Mohamed, Afghan chefs who fled their country; Tina, a young Ethiopian who makes “the cuisine of the world”; Rita, a Lebanese cook, mother of three; and Abdoul Rahman who dreams of a dairy like the one he had in Syria before the war. At the heart of the project is the enhancement of the talent of chefs who have come from afar. An interesting innovative element is instead the combination formed with the French chefs, who add an unexpected touch to the menus proposed by the refugees. All made possible by the patient accompaniment, throughout the preparation and development of the festival, of dozens of volunteers, interpreters and exponents of the Marseille associations.

The closing of the festival, which will bring together all the chefs and volunteers, will be on Sunday 20 June at the Maison Montgrand space, a charming hotel-restaurant with a garden in the center of Marseille, not far from the Vieux Port, in conjunction with World Refugee Day. An opportunity, for the organizers of the RFF, to reaffirm their support for the humanitarian organization Sos Mediterranée and for the solidarity network of a city that in recent years has proved to be a port open to welcoming migrants and closed, instead, to arms trafficking (see the 2019 story of the ships carrying French weapons to Saudi Arabia for the war in Yemen, blocked in Marseille, Livorno and Genoa due to the protest of activists and port workers, who refused to load the weapons).

Sitting together around a long table laden with African, Asian and South American inspired dishes is a different way, perhaps less rhetorical than the many proclamations of European politicians, to exorcise what today represents a very hard condition for over eighty million human beings. The 1 percent of the world population who lives, lives, works (and cooks) in a country other than the one in which they were born and who are tired of the stereotypes that are stuck on them. To remind us there are the recipes, the stories and the looks of the refugee cooks of Marseille.