Sumac Magazine

“There is nothing like the smell of freshly baked purslane and spinach pies, Za’atar wild thyme mnaeesh pies and akkawi cheese pies in the morning. I grew up spending summers at my grandparents’ home in Abrine, Lebanon. Some mornings my teita would bake, some she would heat up the sajj dome and make sajj mnaeesh not only for us bur also for the entire village. Breakfast was a community event. Anyone passing by was welcome to stop in and join us; strangers, neighbors, all were welcome, as she would yell “howlou,” which means stop by, from her front porch. My teita’s breakfast would feature all the traditional Lebanese favorites: a plate of vegetables picked from her garden; bayd balade w awarma- organic eggs cooked with lamb fat; fatteh- layers of garlicky yogurt, chickpeas, fried pita chips, and pine nuts from the pine tree that outgrew her house; homemade labneh- a creamy, thickened yogurt; makanak sausages, and of course, her famous variety of baked goods. You would come hungry and leave with a full stomach, the day’s village gossip, and a surprisingly accurate reading about your future from your Turkish coffee cup. Teita celebrated her 104th birthday last year, and still welcomes all into her very same home, in our quaint village, as she has, for the last 85 years.” - Tina Lattouf Chamoun ( ), 34-ish, founder of and , Cleveland, Ohio

“Food is a smile on child’s face, the branding of a memory on their soul.”

What kind of food put a smile your face lately? 🎈👇🏻

Today’s Christmas vibes & food memories brought to you by Willem Dafoe. 📸: Alvaro Urbano

Croissant with coffee.
Flowers at the breakfast.
A smile to remember.
Douglas in Paris, 1985.

“When I was about 11, my father used to manage a small but private airport on the outskirts of my hometown, Albuquerque, NM. On the weekends, my sisters and I would often go with him to work. While they would hang out harassing the koi fish outside the main office, I headed upstairs to the tiny diner they had for the transient pilots coming through. I hung out in the kitchen with the chef prepping for breakfast service which consisted of cracking eggs, and making pancake batter (in other words, adding water to a dry ready-to-mix product). Then, I would go front to be the diner's sole server and cashier. I loved getting to hear the stories being told across the tables by people from across the country randomly intersecting in this mile-high desert city. I mostly loved the cash tips I took home. Once the chef learned about it, he made me split with him. At 11, I felt rich in community and finance, one of which I would learn to love losing later in life by working in kitchens, the other which keeps me grounded and motivated to continue cooking. (I'll let you guess which I am still connected to)” - Eric See (), 38 (“but look 37”), Chef/Restaurant Owner, Brooklyn, NY

“Good evening. Welcome to Hawthorne. I'm Julian Slowik, and tonight it'll be our pleasure to feed you. Over the next few hours, you will ingest fast, salt, sugar, protein, bacteria, fungi, various plants, and animals. And at times, entire ecosystems. But I have to beg of you one thing. It's just one. Do not eat. Taste. Savor. Relish. Consider every morsel that you place inside your mouth. Be mindful. But do not eat. Our menu is too precious for that. And look around you, here, we are, on this island. And look around you, here we are, on this island. Accept. Accept all all of it. And forgive. And on that one... Food!” - The Menu

& food memories: “You may be surprised to learn that on my nightstand is a book called ‘The Art of Cooking Omelettes,’ by Madame Romaine de Lyon. It’s an incredible cookbook with hundreds of French omelette recipes. I’m a bit of an omelette connoisseur, and every night before I go to sleep I love dreaming about which omelette I’ll have for breakfast the next day. When I was writing the musical of ‘The Producers’ for Broadway with my wonderful collaborator Thomas Meehan, we’d often meet for brunch at Madame Romaine de Lyon’s restaurant in New York. A lot of ‘The Producers’ musical was actually written while Tom and I were having a jambon, fromage and tomate omelette (ham, cheese and tomato). They were always perfectly cooked, slightly browned on the outside and soft and runny in the middle. The French call that baveuse. I call it heaven.” (From: interview, Nov 13, 22)

Pictured: Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, and Tim Matheson, during filming “To Be Or Not To Be”. Shot by for People Magazine.

Eminem’s food memories are coming to NYC only for a week. His Detroit-born ‘pop-up’ chain, Mom’s Spaghetti is all about red sauce “that tastes like it’s straight from the jar,” sides of garlic butter Texas toast, and “powered” Parmesan.
The name is in reference to a line from the 2002 hit, “Lose Yourself”: “His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti.”

From our archive: "Food has long been considered an aphrodisiac. A lust booming tool that evokes s*xual passion between partners. Studies suggest, however, that oysters will not l**e up your libido. But sharing food might. If cooking together could be considered foreplay, cookbooks could be akin to s*x toys. And so I stocked up in an effort to save our relationship one dinner for two at a time. Maybe if struggling couples huddle over a pot of boiling potatoes the sparks from the gas stove could become fireworks." - from "the path of berries that led to the end" by Brittany Bennett.

The Saturday Memories: Weekend papers, magazine piles, grocery bags, farmers' market picks, fresh coffee, french baguette...
Pictured: Barbra Streisand by Milton Greene during 'What's Up Doc?'

Edward Hopper’s Food Memories: Drawn to restaurants as settings for his stylish avatars of American anomie, deliberately avoided giving them anything to eat. He was far less discriminating about his meals. He generally ate in cheap neighborhood restaurants, although for most of his career he could afford better. When he could cajole his equally ungastronomic wife, Jo, into cooking, their meals often centered on what they described as “the friendly bean.” They reciprocated dinner parties at friends’ homes with invitations to tea and served store­bought cake. His preferred cuisine was ordi­nary American. In Hopper’s world of diners, tearooms, restaurants, and cafeterias, food is noteworthy by its absence. His subjects’ clothes are far more telling than their meals.

From left to right:
i) New York Restaurant, 1922
ii) Tables for Ladies, 1930
iii) Sunlight in a Cafeteria, 1958
iv) Early sketches of his famous work, Nighthawks
v) Self Portrait, 1952

Edward Hopper's New York at  can be seen Until Mar 5, 2023.

: The Artichoke by Nin Andrews.

"The first time I saw it, I thought what an ugly specimen. It looked like Grandma’s bathing cap, grown green and small after all these years. I sliced it open and tasted the pale flesh. And gradually she offered herself up leaf by leaf. In her depth she held a tiny, faded star, a spark that fell in the meteor shower over Frank’s garden. I developed a taste for her expensive style: fancy restaurants, wines by candlelight. Sometimes we stayed inside and read by firelight, drinking the leftover melted butter, wiping the grease on shirt sleeves. I introduced her to friends. She had the heart of a Buddha. Green leaves of flame. Everyone adored her, and she was irresistible. Nightly I grasped her like a seashell and listened to the nothing philosophers spend lifetimes writing about. I became accustomed to the look of a chilled vegetable, kept in the icebox all day. Then one evening there were no leftovers. I went to the grocery store. The sales clerk said artichokes are out of season. This is not San Diego. Still I dreamt of her, dipped in lemony butter, scraped carefully with teeth and sucked, the pale cream of flesh, the tender flower, her skirt held up like a cup, each sip bringing me closer to the moon, the vegetable pearl of her insides where the heart fans out fibrous hairs and waits a last mouthful on her green world." - Nin Andrews’s poem “The Artichoke”, The Paris Review, The Fall Issue 1991

Photo Credit: Pink Yellow Studio