Palestinian American Chef Reem Assil on Creating Community Through Food

04.10.2024 - 13:15 / cntraveler.com

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Food has the power to forge connections, and for Palestinian American chef Reem Assil that means using the flavors, aromas, and hospitality of Arab cooking to strengthen and grow her community in Oakland. Reem chats with Lale about her visionary bakery Reem's, her family’s Palestinian and Syrian legacies, the surreal experience of winning a James Beard award, and her own personal ties with Gaza.

Lale Arikoglu: Hi there. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and this is another episode of Women Who Travel. A year ago this week, the conflict in Gaza started. I'm chatting today with activist, chef, and Oakland restaurant owner and baker Reem Assil. Her visionary store, Reem's, evokes an Arab street corner bakery. Arab hospitality is central to her mission to create a community restaurant.

Reem Assil: When you envision bread and bread bakeries, you always think European bakeries. That's the first thing that comes at least to my mind, my colonized mind as I would say. So I was just really fascinated when I became obsessed with baking, learning the history of bread, when humankind went from just being gatherers and hunters to actually cultivating wheat and turning it into flour, and then taking that flour and mixing it with water, that was from my region of the world.

I mean, in any way, bread for me is life. And so it became a story, a way for me to really go back to my roots and discover my history. And when you think of the bakery from that perspective, the bakery is king. From even the most remote villages in the Arab world, there's the post office and the bakery. It's that important.

So I think from that perspective as an Arab and as a Palestinian in particular, being able to trace back the lifeline of my history through the bread was really important. When I went to the Arab world and saw the bakery, it's just so full of life. You wouldn't even know that there was political turmoil outside of those doors because this space of conviviality, of connection, of warmth, literal warmth from the ovens of people commiserating together, laughing together.

I was lucky to visit Gaza when I was 11 years old and remember those food spaces. So Reem's is a celebration of that feeling, of that warmth, of that conviviality.

LA: Your family when they left, they didn't go straight to the States. And you have connections in Lebanon and Syria, and you went there in 2010 with your father. Correct?

RA: Mm-hmm.

LA: What did you eat? What was it like to go back there?

RA: Oh my goodness! That was such a special trip, and I have the memories with me. The really literally, and I don't say this in a cliche way, the dream of