Cuisine, culture combine in new Conflict Kitchen

The new restaurant near Highland Avenue and Baum Boulevard grabbed national headlines early this summer. Kubideh Kitchen

Open Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Open Friday and Saturday from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m.

Located at the corner of Highland Avenue and Baum Boulevard next to the Waffle Shop

www.kubidehkitchen.com

When Kirsti Adkins drove down Baum Boulevard, something unusual caught her eye — a bright yellow and blue storefront with the words “Kubideh Kitchen” written in Farsi, the official language of Iran.

“I was in Iran when I was in the Peace Corps a long time ago, so I was excited when I could read the Farsi,” she said. “I really wanted an Iranaian restaurant here in Pittsburgh.”

But Kubideh Kitchen is not exactly a restaurant. It’s a takeout storefront that specializes in a single Persian dish, the Kubideh sandwich, which consists of homemade Barbari bread, spiced ground beef — or fried egg for vegetarians, fresh basil, mint and onion. Although the recipe is foreign, the ingredients are locally grown.

Sharing some facilities with the Waffle Shop, the kitchen opened in May 2010 as an independent project of Jon Rubin, John Peña and Dawn Weleski with funding from the Sprout Fund, the Waffle Shop and the Center for Arts in Society.

Rubin is a CMU professor who started the Waffle Shop with students as part of an art class called the Storefront Project. An empty storefront sat next to the shop, so

Rubin joined his colleagues to brainstorm possibilities for the empty space.

“We started a list of food that wasn’t available in Pittsburgh, such as Afghan food, Persian food and Cuban food. Then we noticed a lot of these countries fell into the category of places the U.S. has some type of conflict with,” Rubin said.

So the group dubbed the new project “Conflict Kitchen,” starting with Iranian food and planning to follow with Afghan, North Korean and Venezuelan food in four-month iterations.

Conflict Kitchen aims not only to introduce fresh flavors to Pittsburgh, but also to engage the community in discussing issues that might be unfamiliar.

The green, blue and yellow wrapper around the Kubideh sandwich unfolds to reveal quotes on topics from nuclear power to fashion and film. The quotes are compiled from interviews with local and foreign Iranians.

Jasmine Friedrich, a undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon, works at Kubideh Kitchen through her work-study program.

Along with making the Kubideh sandwich, Friedrich researches the food, culture and visual identity of the kitchen’s next iteration, Afghanistan, which will premiere this fall.

She said she notices that some customers only go for the food, whereas others also take time to read the wrapper.

“We have some people come that have been to the Middle East, or have strong opinions about it. So sometimes we like to set up a conversation between customers so they can keep themselves occupied,” she said.

One of the most heavily debated section of the wrapper concerns Israel.

Many are surprised to learn that outside of Israel, Iran has the largest population of Jews in the Middle East.

None of the interviewees who are quoted on the wrapper said they felt hostile toward Jews, but rather, the political past of Israel.

“Some people are very passionate about this viewpoint and see it as wrong or even offensive,” Friedrich said.

With the help of technology, Kubideh Kitchen already has people talking about issues from beyond the sidewalk.

Using the Waffle Shop dining room, the kitchen hosted two live Skype events in collaboration with the Sazmanab Project in Tehran.

In June, the kitchen invited the public to an international virtual dinner party.

Guests sat down for a traditional Persian meal across from Iranians in Tehran who were projected on a large screen connected by webcam.

In July, the kitchen presented a live screening called “The Tehran/Pittsburgh YouTube Mix,” a back-and-forth discussion using only YouTube videos about each cities’ unique cultural phenomena.

Pittsburgh presented clips about Primanti sandwiches, mullets and the G-20 protests, whereas Tehran played videos of street food vendors, banned haircuts and the 2009 election protests. Guests were amazed by how much the two cities had in common.

“People at the events are really surprised at how tuned in Iranians are to not only the culture in their region but American culture, as well,” Rubin said. “About 70 percent of the people in Iran are under age 30 and are a young, progressive community of people.”

On Oct. 2, Pitt’s Persian student organization, the Persian Panthers, will hold a cultural festival in collaboration with Kubideh Kitchen.

Activities will include a speaker from Iran, a movie screening, music and dance performances and Persian food.

People might feel powerless in stopping international disputes, but Conflict Kitchen allows the Pittsburgh community to build peace and cultural understanding one sandwich at a time.