Making the world’s largest Hummus platter is a delicious, exciting and pointless exercise
In the Hollywood movie ‘You Don’t Mess with the Zohan’, Adam Sandler plays an Israeli agent who just couldn’t get enough of ‘Khhummus’. He gorges on the delicacy by dipping everything from chocolate to chicken to his father’s eye glasses in it.
What we see as a goofy if harmless comedy, Fadi Abboud, the president of the Association of Lebanese Industrialists, sees as a sinister attempt to hijack our beloved Lebanese cuisine by our enemies down south. Mr. Abboud believes that Lebanon is loosing hundreds of thousands of dollars because the world thinks that Hummus, Tabbouleh and Falafel are Israeli inventions.
So what is Mr. Abboud’s plan to rectify that error? First, we break the Guinness world record for largest Hummus plate on earth. After that, we “file an international lawsuit against Israel for claiming ownership of traditional dishes that are believed to be originally Lebanese. ”
While Mr. Abboud’s intentions are doubtless good and the whole exercise will be a lot of fun (I mean come on, the online discussions this would spark? The “hummus is Lebanese” Facebook page? All priceless!), this all sounds to me like an exercise in futility.
Trying to prove that a dish was invented in a specific geographic area, let alone one as tiny as Lebanon, is like trying to pinpoint exactly where the Arabic language was invented. You can’t tell for at least two reasons. 1- this old dish was invented before current borders and ideologies. and 2- You don’t just invent a meal like that. It’s a process that took thousands of years and input from all kinds of peoples and areas.
And don’t get me started with claiming ownership by creating the world’s largest plate of the stuff. This Dubai-esque exercise sounds like a giant penis-measuring competition only adolescent boys would engage in. I just hope the Israelis won’t hop in and play the game. Besides, Mr. Abboud seems to be fighting an imaginary threat. In my experience, people in the US and the UK refer to our food -correctly- as “Middle Eastern” cuisine, with many even calling it Lebanese.
To wrap this up, let’s make that giant delicious bowl of Hummus, but let’s not pretend it’s anything other than a whole loads of fun..
*Update*
I want to sincerely thank Ms. Anissa Helou, the internationally known food writer, for pursuing the matter with some of the world’s leading experts on the matter. Please read more about her findings in the comments section.
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Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
I have watched “Don’t Mess With the Zohan” and the Hummus jokes are really funny (they even extinguish fire with hummus) and if people are led to conclude that hummus is Israeli then we can’t pretty much change what the people wants to think. Now whether we own hummus or not I do not think that is a problem, if we really care for hummus being widespread we wouldn’t mind, like when a foreigner comes to Lebanon and look at a menu in a Lebanese restaurant he will go like “Yeah oh look they have Hummus” and eventually it will turn out that we make more hummus than Israel.
“file an international lawsuit against Israel for claiming ownership of traditional dishes that are believed to be originally Lebanese. ”
That is so funny. Now we file complaints on behalf of food? What does it matter if it is or not ours?
And yes as you mentioned we cannot claim ownership over something that has gone through many generations perhaps before us, or we copied over from someone else more likely changing something tiny in it, you cannot be really specific about it. I would be interested as to the facts that might be brought up though by Mr. Abboud to “build a case”.
Breaking a Guinness world record is fun just and is a fun way to prove that hummus is Lebanese, but its not a “legal” way to, so its more about fun! Though I dunno if it’ll prove anything
(The Dabke record was broken in canada by Lebanese for example)
i am not so sure that it is correct to refer to lebanese cuisine as middle eastern but i agree with you about the futility of the lawsuit except that it makes the point that hommus is not israeli, which it is not. who knows where the dish may have originated. perhaps egypt for all we know. you have to follow the history of the chickpea and then find texts that explain different ways of preparing them and hope to find a description of hommus in there. charles perry, the leading expert on medieval arab cookery, would know. i’ll ask him.
It definitely wont stop with Hummous. The list could be quite exhaustive – though I’m curious, is this the best way for ALI to be spending its money?
Tony,
Thanks for your comment, well said!
Anissa,
Oh would love that! (asking MR. Perry), please let me know what he says..
Jad,
Definitely NOT the best way to spend his money!
Maybe the Italians should follow suit by suing the US in general and NY in particular for popularizing the Pizza pie. What a looser?
BTW, is a Hamburger from Hamburg and a Frankfurter from Frankfurt and should anyone give a damn?
Great post! You hit the nail on the head. One other thing is that one can look to recent history to clarify that hummus is not Israeli; Israel has only been a country for 61 yrs. While I think this guy has all the best intentions, I think he needs to realize that the way he is pursuing this puts us in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. It’s weak minded and archaic thinking. And, yes as you said, breaking the hummus record would be cool and fun. It’s stops at that.
I’m not surprised since ever since I came to the US, I have seen many misperceptions about Lebanese food. In the LA county area for example, Israelis, Armenian and Greek claim that they invented Hummus and tabouleh (and you should see the Greek tabouleh,not a good sight at all) . In fact, the Armenians are not even ashamed to claim that the very famous Lebanese breakfast (mankousheh) is called Armenian pizza. While I do believe that a strong campaign advertising Lebanon for its good cuisine and not only its hot girls (which is becoming an embarrassment rather than an asset) would help , I don’t know how making the biggest plate of Hummus is going to serve this very same purpose. And If I may add, or rather ask : where did this obsession with making the largest anything came from? We already made the biggest kibbeh plate this summer, how did that help the kibbeh followers and its image as a Lebanese dish? I thought that the “largest” “biggest” “Tallest” was a trait exclusive to the Leaders of Qatar or Dubai…
this is what Charles Perry wrote to me: “I personally suspect it is Lebanese, and probably Beiruti because the traditional presentation (whipped up around the inside of a reddish bowl, with a garnish in the middle) seems very urbane to me.
But no medieval manuscript includes a recipe anything like it. The
closest is that awful hummus kasa from K. Wasf — we’ve both tried it, it doesn’t taste like hummus and it doesn’t even have the texture of a dip. so I think hummus bi-tahineh is not medieval and might not go back farther than the 18th century.” CP
I read on this last year, and I actually find merit in the lawsuit.
The major influence behind these lawsuits is business. The worldwide hummus industry is estimated at US$1billion. Why wouldn’t a Lebanese producer of this product, who is in direct competition with Israeli producers, fight to have this commodity “Lebanonised” in law?
This would grant them a significant advantage over Israeli producers, as it would force the Israeli hummus makers to label their products “Lebanese dip”.
Although there is a humourous angle, as shown in this post, this isn’t the first time such action has been taken.
Champagne in France successfully forced champagne makers worldwide to drop the name “champagne”. Greece did likewise with “fetta” cheese, Portugal with “porto” wine and even Hungary with “tokay”.
The only problem with Lebanon trying to monopolise “Lebanese” cuisine is that our food is also Syrian, Palestinian and Jordanian food. These countries also, legitimately, produce the same food products.
Apart from that, I agree totally with these lawsuits as it would further the business interests of Lebanese producers.
A lawsuit against Israel on this matter is ridiculous. Guess what? Zohan is a FICTIONAL character created in HOLLYWOOD. Mr. Abboud risks looking like former US Vice President Dan Quayle, who complained about the behavior of the fictional TV character Murphy Brown and thus cemented his reputation as an idiot.
The Israeli government did not create the character or the movie, so suing Israel because of a movie with which it had nothing to do strikes me as, umm, silly. The habit of blaming Israel for everything went too far a loooong time ago.
In addition, given that nobody actually knows where hummus originated or who created it (if there was indeed one single creator, which seems kind of doubtful), it’s impossible to know whether that creator was a Jew, an Arab, a Druze or someone else, or where the person lived.
Many people in America, including many American Jews, refer to it as a “middle eastern” food, as someone said above. I honestly have never heard American Jews call hummus an “Israeli food.”
So is it REALLY worth wasting time in a court room attacking your neighbors to the south?
A far, far better way to gain new markets would be to experiment and find some more really delicious, amazing ways to prepare/use hummus. Since these will be developed in the modern era, you’ll be able to track these new inventions back to documented Lebanese sources. And regardless of the business question, EVERYBODY who enjoys really good food will thank you.
Constructive invention that improves the world for everyone? Or silly, wasteful, frivolous lawsuits? Which of these would actually be better for Lebanese business?
Anyway, hi.
Well, just to clarify, the Zohan movie was just an allegory that I used to present the issue. It was not referred to specifically by Mr. Abboud
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