The Diplomat
With the aim of promoting the inclusion of refugees through gastronomy, last Wednesday saw the opening of Acoge un Plato Casa Árabe, the first restaurant of the Acoge un Plato project, an initiative of CEAR, the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid.
The terrace of Casa Árabe in Madrid, a meeting point for relations with the Arab world, is the space chosen for this restaurant created through the social enterprise Causas CEAR, a legal entity whose aim is the social and labour inclusion of asylum seekers, stateless persons and migrants in need of international protection and/or at risk of social exclusion, through employment.
The restaurant, with the gastronomic advice of chef Martín Coronado, presents a simple menu with ten dishes that allow you to travel through the aromas, colours and flavours of Arab gastronomy with recipes that have accompanied the refugees in the project on their journeys and allow them to connect the stories and culture of the place they come from with the country that welcomes them.
This project, which began timidly in the kitchens of the CEAR Temporary Shelter Centre in Getafe, is much more than a gastronomic project in which dishes from Lebanon have been selected, such as Labneh, Moroccan zaalouk, Libyan sweet potato harra, Jordanian beef kofta, Palestinian shawarma mushakan, Tunisian Moorish sardines and the cross-cutting Hummus bi Lahme and lamb tajine, together with Basbousa sponge cake, a dessert representative of Egypt. A menu that has come to light after months of work and research, with the participation of part of the Acoge un Plato Catering team, who will now be responsible for the kitchen of this Casa Árabe restaurant. Acoge Un Plato Casa Árabe will be open to the public from Sunday to Wednesday from 7 p.m. to midnight, and from Thursday to Saturday from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. until October.
