A white tent, as large as a circus big-top and just as crowded, shakes and rustles to the boom of a loudspeaker.
“Hummus!” a voice bellows through a microphone. “Hummus Lubnani!”
The crowd cheers, claps, presses forward, and there, through the milling bodies, rises the ceramic contours of a giant bowl, as wide as a truck is long, its edge as high as a man’s shoulder. Around it throng an army in tall chef’s caps, stirring the bowl’s contents with giant wooden paddles. Every few minutes a chef pushes through to the bowl’s edge and empties an enormous basin of cream-like liquid into it.
Below, the digits of a huge electronic scale climb through the hundreds. The scale clicks: 2,080 kilograms weight. The crowd cheers.
“Two tons!” the loudspeaker roars. “Lebanon has just set the Guinness world record for most hummus ever assembled in one place!”
Hummus — the unassuming hors d’oeuvre that ties any Lebanese meal together — may seem an unlikely battleground for global conflict. Yet the mighty vat under the big-top sits at the center of what has become an all-out tug-of war between Lebanon — which claims to be hummus’ birthplace — and a bevy of foreign industry players marketing the dish as Greek, Turkish or Israeli cuisine.
“We first noticed our food’s piracy during international agro exhibitions, where many Lebanese products were marketed under other appellations,” said Fady Abboud, president of the Association of Lebanese Industrialists (ALI). “This results in colossal losses [for Lebanon’s economy].”
The hummus market is worth more than $1 billion globaly, with 500,000 tubs eaten every day in the United Kingdom alone, said Abboud. The international community seems to have forgotten that hummus is to the Levant what Cornish Pasty is to Cornwall, and the Lebanese want it back.
Hummus nationalists have been particularly outraged by restaurants serving hummus bi tahini, falafel and baba ghannouj as “traditional Israeli cuisine,” and are currently preparing an international lawsuit against Israel over the dishes’ ownership.
In addition, the ALI, the Syndicate of Lebanese Food Industries, the Ministry of Industry and the Chamber of Commerce are petitioning the European Union to accord hummus, along with 24 other Lebanese national dishes, a place under its Protected Designation of Origins Act. The status assures a product can only be sold in European markets if it is produced in its country of origin.
Industry representatives stress that they are not trying to monopolize the market for chickpea dip.
“Hummus, in various forms and under various titles, is served across the Mediterranean and Middle East,” said Edward Aoun, deputy chairman of International Fairs & Promotions (IFP), the group organizing the event. “However, the name, as well as the dish in its most conventional form, are strictly Lebanese.” The first use of the term — originally hummus bi tahini — occurred in Lebanon in the 1950’s, advocates say. The first canned hummus was manufactured by the Lebanese brand Cortas.
However, thanks to rampant misappropriation by other nations, the average global consumer is more likely to associate hummus with Israel, Turkey or the Mediterranean in general, giving scant consideration to the country that first furnished the dish.
Besides potential economic gains, the fight to bring hummus back to Lebanon is a nationalistic struggle, advocates say. “This is a patriotic event on a national scale,” said Fady Jreissati, vice president of the IFP.
Whether a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records — or the spectacle of a two-ton bowl of hummus — will be enough to gain international recognition remains to be seen. If the events of the day are any evidence, there is little doubt that the battle will go on.
