Hearth in the right place: a healing food project in Lebanon

Hearth in the right place: a healing food project in Lebanon

The story of the Great Oven began on a trip to Lebanon with Nigel Slater. It was 2017 and the British food broadcaster was filming his three-part series Nigel Slater's Middle East. Also on the trip was his long-time collaborator and co-founder of his TV production company, James Gomez Thompson. A Cordon Bleu-trained chef, Thompson had always been obsessed with communal ovens. His Spanish grandmother had regaled him with tales of the shared hearth in her hometown in La Mancha. In Lebanon, he heard a phrase for gossipy women that translated as "women of the oven“ and understood that communal ovens had long been part of the culture there, too.

Thompson also learned from the show's Lebanese producer, Nour Matraji, of a recurring Sunni and Alawite conflict that had ravaged parts of the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli for many years. Putting these thoughts together, he came up with the idea of building a community oven on the frontline where young men from either side of the conflict could cook and eat together with other locals.

Within a year, Matraji and Thompson had launched the project. They had an Armenian oven-builder living outside Beirut construct a two-tonne oven and Thompson persuaded LA-based street artist Shrine, famous