#84: Barbara Massaad - Soup for Syrian Refugees, War in Lebanon, and the Power of the Cookbook | The Food, Conflict, and Unity Series

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Episode Description

Food can serve as a means to bridge culture and conflict. In this episode of Finding Founders, join us in exploring the power of food with Barbara Massaad, a Lebanese-American cookbook author, photographer, food consultant, and TV host.

Barbara Massaad spent the first 10 years of her life in Lebanon and moved to Florida as a result of war. Her lifelong relationship with food began with Lebanese culture and at 15, she started helping her father in the family-owned Lebanese restaurant. In 1988, her family returned to Lebanon. Flashing forward, after getting an advertising and marketing degree in college and taking 7 years away from work to start a family, Massaad embarked on a new journey in the restaurant business. Determined to pursue this dream, she trained with several renowned chefs at Lebanese, Italian, and French restaurants.

Driven by her love of using cooking and photography to tell stories, Massaad began the journey of creating her first cookbook called Man'oushé: Inside the Street Corner Lebanese Bakery. She continues to use her love for cooking to heal and break barriers, whether it was during the Syrian Civil War and today when faced with conflict in Lebanon.

Show Notes

Childhood: Massaad described living in Lebon for the first ten years of her life as growing up surrounded by daisies, cooking, and friends until everything changed.
Leaving Lebanon: The war in Lebanon in 1975 led Massaad and her family to leave for France and then eventually the United States, beginning a new chapter in her life.
Food: Food played a central role in connecting Massaad to the world she left behind and shaping her life when her family opened a restaurant.
Returning to Lebanon: When Massaad and her family returned to Lebanon, Massaad describes feeling like a stranger in the place she used to call home.
Early Career: From cooking when she worked in an advertising agency, to taking care of her children and reentering the workforce, Massaad describes how her maternal drive gave her life direction.
Food and Connection: Massaad’s connection to food and photography drove her to embark on a journey around Lebanon to create her first cookbook.
The Journey: She found value in her journey and experiences, not necessarily the final product, the cookbook.
The Cookbook: Massaad’s cookbook found more success than she bargained for.
Syrian Civil War: Like the war in Lebanon, the Syrian civil war changed the direction of Massaad’s life.
Photos: With the civil war in 2013, Massaad took action the way she knew how, through cooking and photography.
August 2020: In August of 2020, an explosion rocked Beirut destroying her old restaurant and the world as she knew it.
Trying to Move Forward: Now, Lebanon is in a state of conflict on a scale that is difficult for her to encapsulate.
The Future: Massaad is working on a new cookbook to capture the turmoil around her and that she is experiencing.