LONDON: Take a Middle Eastern staple, add some Italian ingredients, give it a bougie name, charge extra for it and what do you have? Answer: a recipe for disaster.
That is exactly what happened with “Loubyeh Arrabbiata,” a failed twist on the Levantine classic that prompted a spicy reaction on social media.
The dish, which is simply composed of fine green beans, tomato sauce, homemade spicy chilli oil and Parmesan cheese, received a lot of undesired attention after Beirut-based author Lina Mounzer shared a post on Twitter criticizing it.
Mounzer, who posted a screenshot of the online menu without revealing the name of the restaurant, accused the eatery of being “audacious” for “taking advantage of, profiting off, this situation” by charging $10 for a dish that is considered a poor person’s staple.
“A dish of loubyeh bil zeit (never mind the bougie name-disguise) is over $10. In what pre-collapse world was loubyeh bil zeit, the food you ate to save money, that expensive? We have to swallow the banks robbing us and also war profiteering from everyone else?,” she said on her Twitter account.
While some users highlighted their confusion about including Parmesan in the dish, others shared the critic’s anger, with some saying that $10 for the dish is difficult to justify even with “Parmesan on top.”
“Next up: Foul aglio e olio for 600,000,” said one user.
Another Twitter user asked: “Can this stop? Can we stop all this nonsense and stupidity?”
Loubyeh bi zeit is one of the most popular vegetarian summer dishes across the Levantine region.
Although its exact origins are unknown, the dish it is widely considered a humble dish for the simplicity of its ingredients and is often found on all dinner tables.
This is not the first time Arabs have been angered by a twist on a classic recipe.
In July, a fattoush “party platter” recipe released by The Washington Post was described as a “travesty” by Arabs online.
The recipe received a similar treatment to the “Loubyeh arrabbiata,” with many Arab Twitter users criticizing the dish and writer Farah-Silvana Kanaan accusing the newspaper of “blasphemy.”
In 2018, #SaveTheHummus hashtag became the center of an unlikely diplomatic debate after a photo of various dessert flavors of hummus, including a chocolate-chip version of the dip, went viral across the internet and Muslims and Jews were asked “to unite to stand against dessert hummus.”
Food bloggers and food magazines out there are advised: Do not foul with Arabs!
