Lebanese people rediscover local flavours as crisis hits food imports

Tanya Nasr grew up with the taste of her grandmother’s tangy pomegranate molasses but had never made it herself until Lebanon’s economic crisis and Covid-19 took her back to her home village in the mountains.

As street protests and economic uncertainty set back her work as a film producer, Nasr, 35, got to thinking how a sudden shortage of imported food could be plugged with the local products she remembers from childhood.

“I went from my personal film production business to the production of traditional things from the land. You have to go this way when the country is stalled and you can’t buy anything,” she said by phone from the northern Koura district.

Holed up in the kitchen of her family’s restaurant, Nasr has stepped up production of orange and rose blossom preserves, olive oil and Zaatar - a popular spice mix, and revamped recipes like pepper-almond jam to appeal to modern palates.

She is already starting to export.

Nasr’s culinary experiments reflect a crisis-driven gastronomic shift away from the cities and imported goods towards local businesses focused on limiting waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

Until Lebanon’s economy went into meltdown in mid-2019, most food was shipped in from abroad – from the meat for sumptuous mixed-grills to the chickpeas for its world-famous hummus.

But purchases of foreign-made goods crashed more than 40% in 2020 from a year earlier, according to government data, as the crisis depleted foreign currency reserves.