The Palestinian home-restaurant in Israel - negotiating food culture

This article examines Palestinian home-based restaurants in Israel as ambivalent culinary spaces where hospitality is shaped by cultural and political tensions. Drawing on multi-year ethnographic research, it traces how Palestinian citizen restaurateurs—positioned as ethnic and national minorities—negotiate the competing demands of cultural expression and accommodation when hosting Jewish Israeli diners. These encounters unfold through food, décor, and narrative expression, revealing restaurateurs’ careful calibration between pride and pragmatism. Rather than straightforward sites of empowerment, the restaurants function as fragile spaces in which Palestinian cooks and hosts navigate the risks and possibilities of making Palestinian cuisine publicly legible within a dominant Jewish-Israeli social order. Attending to the sensory, material, and affective dimensions of the meal, the article shows how culinary interactions generate moments of proximity without mitigating structural asymmetries, illuminating the complex work of sustaining Palestinian cultural continuity within a contested national space.