There's no better way to immerse yourself in a country than to eat its food.Credit: iStock
Zouzou is huge. He's built like a rugby player, or a standover man. The leg of lamb he's clutching looks like a chicken drumstick in his giant fist.
But he has a gentle way about him, and Zouzou grins as he lays the meat down on a huge wooden board and sets about butchering it into small cubes that will be threaded onto skewers and passed across to the grill master to be roasted to perfection.
"How long have you been working here?" I ask as Zouzou beckons me into the kitchen to demonstrate his technique.
The section of the wall outside Zouzou's restaurant.Credit: Ben Groundwater
He smiles again. "As long as I have been alive. This was my father's restaurant."
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It's called Al Karawan, and it's a thing of beauty. The lamb shish kebabs here are the best in Bethlehem. Maybe the best in the Palestinian Territories. The mezze platters take up entire tables. The beers are cold. The restaurant is in good hands.
Zouzou, holding a large leg of lamb.Credit: Ben Groundwater
Things have changed, however, since Zouzou's father's time. While the neighbourhood around Al Karawan was once a quiet, nondescript part of Bethlehem, these days it's defined by the first thing you see when you step outside the restaurant: the 8-metre-high wall topped with wire fencing that separates Palestine from Israel.
Grey and impenetrable, that wall stretches down two of the nearby streets, slicing Zouzou's neighbourhood in half, the watchtowers casting a permanent shadow.
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Here at Al Karawan you find everything that's both good and troubling in the Palestinian Territories. You find a bunch of normal, friendly local people – not people you hear about on the news, not people who will ever make headlines. The guys at Al Karawan are just a bunch of Armenian-Palestinians who run a great business and enjoy meeting the people who patronise it.
You find a whole lot of those diners enjoying Zouzou's food: men sitting out the front smoking cigarettes; women in their headscarves hanging around inside.
And you find that wall, that visual demonstration of the trouble that affects these people's lives, the blockade that at least partially defines them.
This is how you get to understand a country. Not by visiting cathedrals or wandering around museums. Not by taking open-top bus tours or queuing at monuments. You get to understand a country simply by eating its food.
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There's no better way to immerse yourself. As a traveller you learn so much just by taking part in the rituals of food, the buying, the cooking, the eating and the sharing. The quirks and intricacies and depths of a culture all reveal themselves through the course of a meal.
Anyone who's travelled knows this is true. It works for any country. If you want to get to know Italy and Italians, you go drink coffee in a ratty old bar. If you want to get to know Argentina, you get yourself invited to an "asado", or backyard barbecue. If you want to get to know Morocco, you wander around a marketplace.
Commercial entities have caught on to this notion, too. That's why food tours are becoming so popular. I travelled through Israel and Palestine with Intrepid, which offers food-themed tours in about 20 countries.
Earlier in that trip, I dined with a local Israeli couple in the city of Haifa through a website called EatWith, which sets up travellers with food-loving locals who are keen to cook them a family meal. And there are plenty of other tour operators and websites offering similar experiences.
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To dine in another country isn't merely to fill your stomach. It's to meet and interact with people who are completely removed from traditional tourism circles. It's the real deal. No barriers.
At Zouzou's restaurant, the life of a Palestinian is laid bare. It's friendly and it's fun. It's welcoming and it's traditional. But it's all played out in the shadow of that wall.
Have you got to know a place through its food? Have you met people and had great experiences just by eating?
The writer travelled to Israel and the Palestinian Territories as a guest of Intrepid Travel
Email: b.groundwater@fairfaxmedia.com.au
Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater
See also: The best country in the world for food
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