We eat our identity. Everything else is secondary : The social history of shawarma poutine French fries, gravy, chicken bits and a white sauce drizzled over top. It s not shawarma and it s not poutine, but together the fries and chicken tell a new story
Author of the article: Joseph Brean
Publishing date: May 25, 2021 • 5 hours ago • 5 minute read • Shawarma poutine on offer at a restaurant in Toronto. Photo by National Post
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In the long-running annual series Oh, The Humanities! National Post reporters survey academic scholarship at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, with an eye to the curious, the mysterious, and the hilarious. Once known as “the Learneds,” because it is a gathering of learned societies, the Congress has gone entirely virtual
The rationing of ingredients for bread, the shortage of basic supplies like toilet paper, the rising number of casualties when the novel coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, it reminded Hussein Siblini, co-owner of Dearborn’s New Yasmeen Bakery, of the civil war he witnessed growing up in Lebanon. “I kept thinking, am I back in Beirut or am I in Michigan?” Siblini says.
His family’s bakery in Beirut, where he grew up, managed to stay open throughout the Lebanese Civil War, which lasted from 1975 until 1990. But he doesn’t think restaurants and bakeries will be so lucky during this pandemic.