Palestine on a Plate: A Q&A With Rania Talala from Ardi Concept Store

Interview by Rushani Epa.

There’s only one Palestinian restaurant in the entirety of Paris. Just one, and it’s Ardi Concept Store in the 18th arrondissement. The first thing that hits you as you enter it is the deliciously comforting smell of homestyle Palestinian food; the second thing is the warmth the space gives off. Be it in the decor toting knick-knacks from across Palestine or the lighting that highlights the smile each guest flashes at one another. It makes you feel as if you’ve walked into your grandmother's or mother’s home for a meal.

There’s a raised stage that hosts people giving talks or playing music on event nights and Ardi transcends from a Parisian eatery to a space held for community. Ardi is Arabic for 'my land’ and the food here is a symbol of resistance, so I order three dishes and taste my way through Palestine. 

First off is the classic za’atar lathered on crisped-up pita with a healthy lashing of Palestinian olive oil served with a little side salad that makes the perfect lunch option. Palestinian za’atar is traditionally made from native thyme, ground sumac and toasted sesame seeds and it goes hand-in-hand with Palestinian olive oil that’s beautifully full-bodied and slightly peppery. 

This took me to the next dish, hummus bil lahme, a creamy amalgamation of hummus, fried minced beef, olive oil, toasted almonds and pomegranate arils that all get a tangy kick from sumac. It came with fresh pita to mop it all up with: heaven sent. 

But the pièce de résistance for me was the idreh: a dish that hails from Hebron and is typically done with lamb, but here it’s done with grilled chicken scattered throughout chickpeas and spiced rice, topped with toasted almonds and pomegranate arils again. It’s served with a little pot of yoghurt on the side and a cucumber and tomato salad which you’re invited to savour with each spoonful of rice. I got emotional; it tasted so good; it was creamy with subtle notes of cinnamon and a nuttiness from the chickpeas and toasted almonds; balanced beautifully by the freshness of the salad and pomegranate. I sat down with the owner of Ardi, Rania Talala, while my soul intertwined with the idreh, and we chatted for hours about life, Ardi and Palestine.

Talala is a French-Palestinian woman who was born and raised in Paris. Her mother is from Jerusalem, and her father is from Yafa (or Jaffa) in Palestine. He lived through the Nakba and was forced to flee Palestine to Jordan as refugees with his family. For Talala, becoming an activist was a no-brainer. Here is a snapshot of our conversation.

RE: Tell us more about yourself, Rania.

RT: I always define myself as a Palestinian woman, even though I really love my French culture. But I had to always shout it out loud. I always knew inside of myself that if I didn't do it, we would be erased: our character, our identity and everything. So that's why it was always important to me to be very close to my Palestinian culture. And I chose food as a weapon to resist, which is why I opened Ardi. I decided to open this place to promote our Palestinian culinary culture because it has been stolen by Zionists and by the Israeli government; it is foodwashing and they say that [Palestinian cuisine] is called Israeli cuisine. I believe in Jewish cuisines, yes. Cuisines with an ‘s’ as there is not just one but many Jewish cuisines, but Israeli as a cuisine doesn't exist. And to exist and to call it cuisine, you have to create one special dish but they have actually just copied and appropriated.

So what is Ardi all about?

I wanted to promote family cooking—the kind of food we make at home with the women in our lives: my mum, aunties and cousins. This is the food I make for my kids at home, and the food we share from mother to daughter. I'm proud because now we have even white people knowing our dishes by name and coming in asking for the same dish. Whereas, three years ago, no-one knew anything about Palestinian food.

Tell us more about Palestinian cuisine.

We have many vegetarian recipes. Actually, Palestinian food is very healthy. It's fresh. It's colourful. You have a lot of spices, but not the hot ones. We love cardamom, cumin, pepper, paprika, cinnamon, everything. We love cinnamon. We also love dates. We are also vegetable lovers. When we're hungry, we don't eat sweets or industrial foods, we eat lettuce, carrots, cucumber. This is the way we eat.

I can see your love for spices—I mean, even looking at the za’atar on the pita.

Yes, za'atar is a very precious herb for us.

Palestinians are also restricted from foraging za’atar by the Israeli government too, right?

Yes, exactly. Za’atar means a lot to us because it's with us all day long until the night. We start the day with za’atar on bread and we also have a legend that says za’atar makes us smarter. That's why all the mummies always put bread in [their kids] lunchboxes with some za’atar.

I’m also getting strong, fresh, citrus flavours.

Yes, that’s from the sumac. This is the main spice that we love in Palestinian cuisine. All the things we have in our cuisine here come from our land. This is our land on a plate, and you can imagine how rich our land is. As you can see, we also love our olive oil.

Yes, and it’s so delicious and rich. So tell me, what are some of your favourite Palestinian dishes?

I have two that aren’t on the menu. Maqloubeh: a one-pot rice. 

…Is that the pot over there? (I spy a massive pot sitting in the fridge.)

Yes! At Ardi, I only serve it for large groups, starting at eight people for a celebration. You can book it. It's impossible for me to make it in individual portions. The second one is stuffed eggplants and zucchinis, which is called mahshi. We love stuffed vegetables. I don't do it at Ardi because it's very time consuming because we have to empty each vegetable, cook the rice with spices and the meat, stuff it and then cook it with tomatoes.

And you do knafeh here!

Yes, we do. And that is the Palestinian dessert. I have a lot of Palestinian people from Nablus who come here and say, “Wow, it tastes like home.”. It is the best compliment I can get.

I love that. It’s a real community space here.

Yeah. It's beautiful. I always say that it's not a restaurant; it's not a cultural centre; it's a little Palestinian home. During lunch, it's not the same atmosphere as it is at night. During lunch, we have office employees that come here, so it's different, and at night for dinner, you have people coming with their oud, the Arabic guitar, and they dance the dabke.

What would your biggest hopes be for the future?

For myself, it is to be able to spread the word until my last day that we are here. We're not invisible; we do exist, and nobody can erase us. I also want to help my fellow Palestinians in Palestine. I buy everything from Palestine, from the coffee to the keffiyeh from Hebron, and even the ceramics you eat come from Hebron. We have a lot of things, like, I'm trying to promote all the Palestinian businesses and business owners, but also all the creative people. 

For example, here we have a photograph of Rand Dabboor, an amazing graphic designer who also has a gallery in Ramallah, Palestine. She promotes and tries to preserve all traditional Palestinian dresses because each dress is unique, including the stitches. According to the stitches on the dress, you can understand where the woman comes from. She also films and photographs the streets of Palestine. She created our logo in five minutes too, because she just understood exactly what I needed.

It’s beautiful to see the way you’ve brought together the community and provided a space that heralds Palestinian culture. How did you find the reception in France?

It's just horrible when you can’t be yourself. Even, you know, when I was looking for a place to rent for Ardi, it took me two and a half years because when anybody heard about a Palestinian project, they would say no. I have had real estate agents come to me and tell me, “You killed yourself when you said ‘Palestinian Project’”. As a Palestinian, I am condemned to fight. It’s the same when we try speaking Arabic. We are constantly told to speak French when we are in France by white Frenchmen. When I host Palestinian customers here, we speak naturally in Arabic. It gives me a sense of “oh, I'm really home” and belonging.

That’s just horrible to hear, but disappointing to say that it isn’t surprising considering the rampant Islamophobia in France. People would have zero awareness of how insidious the mistreatment of Palestinians in day-to-day life is too.

I got sick with a thyroid problem due to traumatic stress. The last 12 months have been very hard for me. It's not an easy task to fight. That is the struggle of the Palestinian people. But that's why it's so important for people to understand the importance of rallying together with you and supporting you in any way that they can. 

I was always on, and I burned out. This is a real issue. The mental charge and the activism burnout. We have to preserve ourselves. It's something I only got to understand a few weeks ago. I’ve been an activist since my childhood, and I only just learned this now.

That's the other issue, the expectation of your labour as a Palestinian. Tell me more about your team.

We have a team that knows exactly how to cook Palestinian cuisine, and I taught them everything. They aren’t chefs at all, but immigrants from Bangladesh who one day knocked on my door seeking jobs. I taught them everything from A to Z, I love them, and I consider them like my little brothers. I love them so much.

Ardi is a safe place for all of us and also a place to deconstruct bad ideas and colonisation. We do all this through food, through conferences, through dance, through culture, through art and through everything we can make. It is wonderful to be able to spread the word. And in France, we're very late compared to other English speaking countries with activism. 

That's ironic. 

It is. There's a hierarchy of resistance, and culture is not as powerful as intellectual resistance. Which is why I'm writing a book on this and the cultural appropriation of our cuisine. I'm not a chef; the cuisine is only a tool for me to speak out about Palestine. 

You know, I have three kids, and they always give me so much love. They always say, “Mummy, you give us so much hope and you're such a role model for us.”. When you hear that from your own kids, it’s everything. Because I didn’t create Ardi for me, I created it for us. A big us. It’s for my community, it’s for my family, it's for Palestinian people, it’s for the next generation and it's for all People of Colour. It's a safe place for us. 

You can stay up-to-date with Rania and her endeavours here, and follow Ardi Concept Store here. Add it to your must-visit lists in Paris and spread the word about the work they’re doing and continue to amplify Palestinian voices.