Ever since Lebanese social entrepreneur Kamal Mouzawak began championing his country’s culinary heritage and empowering the people who keep it alive, he dreamed of extending his reach abroad. But he never expected it to happen under such trying circumstances.
Souk El Tayeb, the first farmers market in Lebanon that he opened in Beirut in 2004, put the 52-year-old humanitarian on the global food map. That inspired other projects across the country, from community outreach and guesthouses to a series of restaurants called Tawlet, where women from different regions of Lebanon came each day to cook dishes from their villages. In total, Mouzawak estimates that more than 500 women, including refugees, have been trained and employed across his organization’s projects and programs.
But the deadly explosion in Beirut’s port in August 2020 upended everything. While his partner, the Paris-based fashion designer Rabih Kayrouz, was being treated in the hospital for a brain hemorrhage caused by the blast, Mouzawak faced the devastation to their home, their city and the business he spent nearly two decades growing.
Almost overnight, he and his team created an emergency community kitchen, in partnership with Spanish-American chef José Andrés’ nonprofit World Central Kitchen, to feed residents who lost everything, hospital staffers caring for thousands of injured people and rescue workers searching for survivors. Although all locations of Tawlet closed (and all but one guesthouse), he was able to rebuild a space across from the port thanks to $200,000 in donations. Today, it’s where his team of nearly 100 workers run Souk el Tayeb, and one outpost of Tawlet, as well as a grocery and a permanent community kitchen that serves 2,000 meals per day.
As this operation carries on under the leadership of Mouzawak’s business partner, Christine Codsi, Mouzawak is building anew in France, with Tawlet Paris, a canteen and grocer that opened this month in the 11th arrondissement.
During the restaurant’s opening week, Mouzawak talked about his journey from one market to many, his feelings about leaving Lebanon — a former French mandate — and how food can unite. "I was trying to change the world. I still want to change the world! It’s not that I decided to do it, I just followed a stream. Nothing I’ve done in my life has been with long term planning. During the war, Lebanon was divided into small parts, each unreachable from the others. But when the war ended, the whole country opened. I traveled for more than a year to write a guidebook about Lebanon and discovered this country I heard about, but could never visit. I was not only amazed by its natural beauty but by the link between the people I met. Whether Christian, Muslim or Druze, we were all the same. I went to meet people with open arms, and they had even wider arms. Then, I wrote about travel and food, learned about macrobiotics and slow food, joined the board of the Slow Food organization for several years, and knew food was the way to unite". NYT
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