Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

Pittsburgh’s Conflict Kitchen Lives Up to Its Name

Conflict Kitchen goes Palestinian. Screenshot from Conflict Kitchen

Some members of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community are none too happy with Conflict Kitchen’s latest menu.

Every few months, the popular local restaurant features a cuisine from a country that’s in conflict with the U.S. Currently on the menu is Palestinian food, which has stirred up a bit of a backlash.

“Palestine is not in conflict with the U.S.,” said Gregg Roman, director of the community relations council at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. “The restaurant is stirring up conflict for the sake of trying to be relevant.”

One of the founders of Conflict Kitchen, Jon Rubin, disagrees. “There has never been a Persian, or an Afghan or a Venezuelan restaurant in the city.” he said, referring to some of the other cultures whose food has been offered. The founders were trying to “fill what we felt was a void in Pittsburgh,” he said. “So we started thinking about what can we serve and how can we have a conversation that’s not already here.”

Last week, the restaurant co-hosted a talk with the University Honors College at University of Pittsburgh, featuring Nael Althweib, an internist originally from the West Bank, and Pitt professor Ken Boas, chair of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-USA. Tensions flared, and the top story on the Pittsburgh-based Jewish Chronicle’s website following the event read, “University Honors College co-sponsors one-sided talk on Middle East.”

“You can’t always separate food and culture and politics,” Rubin said, “but food is a way of looking at our common humanity.”

Controversy aside, the Palestinian menu has been a success. About 300 customers a day have sampled the cuisine since it went on offer, Rubin said.

Hadas Margulies is the new food intern at the Forward. Find her at HadasMargulies

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.