Franco-Palestinian chef and hotelier Fadi Kattan, who splits his time between projects in London and the West Bank, can now add author to his repertoire. His new cookbook, Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food, set to be released on May 14 in the US, honors his hometown and its people. In a devastating time for Palestinians, as a violent war with Israel pushes surviving Gazans to the brink of famine and impacts life for those in the West Bank every day, Kattan’s book aims to bring Bethlehem into people’s kitchens to preserve the traditions, culture, and flavors of Palestine well beyond the region.
Work on the cookbook began back when Kattan, who completed an education in hospitality at Paris’s Institut Vatel, returned to his native Palestine in 2000, just before the Second Intifada. The chef, who had been working at the InterContinental Hotel in Bethlehem before it was shut down due to the uprising, was forced to shift gears and instead work alongside his businessman father selling kitchens for a period—and it was around this time that he noticed a gap between the colorful, flavor-spiked dishes that Bethlehemites were cooking in their homes and the international-leaning cuisine being served in the town’s restaurants. Inspired by his training in Paris, he set out to find a way to unite the two.
In 2016, Kattan founded Fawda restaurant in Bethlehem, which offers an elevated twist on Palestinian home cooking: tahini-rich hummus and lamb shanks braised in cardamom and fermented yogurt. Kassa Boutique Hotel, a boutique property on the UNESCO World Heritage site of Star Street, followed. And in early 2023, seeking to share the intangible magic of his heritage well beyond Palestine, Kattan co-founded Akub restaurant in London’s Notting Hill.
Here, Kattan discusses his beloved Bethlehem and its many corners of culinary inspiration, from the local markets and his favorite Palestinian spinach bread, to how the Palestinian struggle for ingredients in the West Bank impacts ingredients and home cooking.
Your debut cookbook, Bethlehem, feels like an ode to your hometown. Can you tell us more about it?
My upbringing and where I come from have always influenced everything I do. I wish I could capture the frenzy of a family lunch being prepared at our home in Bethlehem. I suppose that is what this book is: a translation of that feeling in the form of recipes that I can share with other people. My roots are reflected in the book and really, whether it’s a restaurant or a hotel or a book that I’m working on, I’m always telling the story of this beautiful land.
I want this book to feel as though I have taken you by the hand and walked with you to discover my Bethlehem. The recipes are portraits of the people that make up this place. I wanted to write a book without tiptoeing away from the political realities of the Israeli occupation, the injustices we endure as Palestinians, the Nakba of 1948. In the book, I talk about the story of my family’s land in Jaffa being confiscated. I don’t shy away from it. I am unapologetically Palestinian, I’m a proud Palestinian. Cooking is a form of resistance and existence. We are people who live in this land. We are people who grew from this land. Our food is from this land. And that is who we are.
