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PARIS: A new restaurant opened its doors in Paris on Saturday, founded by a Palestinian from Gaza and a Franco-Israeli, aiming to promote reconciliation through food.
The Palestinian, French and Israeli flags fly from the ceiling of ��ٲ���������, the Taste of Peace,” where the first customers packed in to eat hummus, falafel or Gazan salad.
Radjaa Aboudagga and his team have been toiling since 6:00 am to create the Middle Eastern dishes for families and friends of all ages seated on mats or at tables.
“Everything is handmade,” said Aboudagga, a Franco-Palestinian originally from the Gaza Strip, in the restaurant’s crowded kitchen, as he prepares “manakish,” a flatbread topped with cheese, ground beef and herbs.
The restaurant, which will be open four nights a week until June next year, was conceived with Franco-Israeli Edgar Laloum, in partnership with the “Nous reconcilier” (We Reconcile) group.
“I’m happy about this day because it comes at a time when there is finally hope there too,” said Laloum as Aboudagga looked on, referring to the expected return of Israeli hostages and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Laloum, who lived for 30 years in Jerusalem, said the restaurant’s menu is made of “dishes that Israelis and Palestinians eat in the same way.”
“The two peoples, Palestinian and Israeli, have the same customs, the same dreams, the same tears and the same sadness,” added Aboudagga.
“We share the same land, we all have to live together on it,” he added, welcoming the decision of the French government and others to recognize a state of Palestine.

- Joie de vivre -

The restaurant is housed at the Consulat Voltaire, an old electricity sub-station turned cultural center, in the 11th district of Paris near the place de la Bastille.
One customer, Raphael, who did not want to give his last name, told AFP that the three flags were “symbolic.”
“It’s very beautiful and I was explaining to my son that, in the end, we can all live together.”
Another diner, Henri Poulain, 57, said he saw it as a sign of “reconciliation” and “a link between the French Republic on the one hand” and “these two states, one of which has yet to be born.”
Even if the war were to resume in the Gaza Strip, he said he was convinced “it wouldn’t weaken a place like this.”
Psychosociologist Joelle Bordet, 72, said she thought the word “reconciliation” was “too strong.”
“Just being together in the same space, when you’re effectively enemies, is extraordinary,” she said. “I can’t do it today in my network with Russians and Ukrainians.”
Next to Bordet was Nour-Eddine Skiker, head of the “Jalons pour la paix” association, some of whose volunteers came with a local youth council group to lend a hand.
“In this very small space, there is room for everyone,” he said.
One of the young volunteers, Mboreha Ahamed, 23, added: “Being here under these three flags is super symbolic... over a meal where we think of other things.”
At about 2:00 pm, the queue to order mezze was long.
Readings of poems in Hebrew, Arabic and French, discussion groups and concerts were all planned, all, in the words of the restaurant’s founders, in the spirit of “joie de vivre” — the meaning of ��ٲ���������” in both Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
 

POTSDAM, Germany: Wolfgang Bivour carefully emptied a basket of freshly collected mushrooms onto a forest floor covered with fallen autumn leaves. Brown-capped porcini and bay boletes lay beside slimy purple brittlegills and honey-colored armillaria – and, among them, the lethal green death caps.
Bivour, one of Germany’s most famous fungi connoisseurs, described the different species just collected in an oak and beech forest on the outskirts of Potsdam in eastern Germany. Surrounding him were 20 people who listened attentively, among them university students, retirees and a Chinese couple with their 5-year-old daughter.
Across Germany, the traditional forest art of mushroom hunting is enjoying a revival, fed by the coronavirus pandemic restrictions, which pushed people from cramped apartments into forests, and by the growing popularity of the vegan lifestyle. A growing interest in the use of medicinal fungi is also playing a role.
While people in rural areas have gone mushroom picking for ages, city dwellers are now also discovering its joys.
Mushroom hunting was a necessity for many Germans in the difficult years after World War II, when people scoured forests for anything edible. But when West Germany’s economy started booming in the 1950s, and economic conditions also improved in East Germany, many turned away from the practice.
In recent years, images of mushrooms have gone viral on social media, and a hobby once considered uncool has become a chic lifestyle pastime.
Guided tours on mushroom hunting are hugely popular
Bivour, a 75-year-old retired meteorologist, said the tour he led on a recent, drizzly autumn day wasn’t “primarily about filling your basket – although it’s always nice to find something for the dinner table.”
Instead, he said, it was “about teaching people about the importance of mushrooms in the ecosystem and, of course, about biodiversity.”
Bivour is sometimes sought out by hospitals when they have cases of suspected mushroom poisonings.
He has also been giving mushroom tours in the Potsdam region southwest of Berlin for more than five decades.
When the members of his group showed him mushrooms, he identified them with their German and sometimes their Latin names. He spoke about their healing powers or toxicity, gave suggestions on how to prepare some of them, offered historical anecdotes. He invited them to smell and taste the ones that were not poisonous.
Karin Flegel, the managing director of Urania, a Potsdam institution that organizes Bivour’s tours, said his classes are filling up instantly.
“We’ve noticed a huge increase in interest in mushrooms,” she said.
Bivour said he, too, had noticed the surge of interest in his longtime hobby. He began sharing his best finds on Instagram and Facebook, has written books on the subject, and even hosts a popular podcast, the Pilz-Podcast. Pilz is the German word for mushroom.
Fears of poisonous mushrooms
Many people are embracing their new passion with caution, afraid of accidentally picking and eating poisonous mushrooms.
While the poisonous red-capped, white-dotted fly agaric can be easily identified, the very toxic green death cap is sometimes confused with the common button mushroom, or champignon, which is the most widely sold mushroom in stores across the country.
Each year, several people die after eating death caps, often immigrants from the Middle East who are not familiar with the local mushroom varieties.
Tim Köster, a 25-year-old university student from Berlin who joined the excursion with his girlfriend, said he had never foraged for mushrooms as a child, and is often satisfied with the white button mushrooms in the stores. But he also wants to be able to find and prepare his own porcini mushrooms – considered the most popular delicacy among Germany’s more than 14,000 different kinds of mushrooms.
While porcini are often served in risotto or pasta in Italian cuisine, in Germany porcini, as well as bay boletes, are often fried in butter and eaten on toasted sourdough bread with salt and pepper.
As Koster stood amid an abundance of yellow and red fall foliage, he said that the tour was a good start. But asked if he was ready to start collecting mushrooms on his own, he said: “I don’t dare yet.”
Instead, he said he considers picking mushrooms and taking them to an expert to verify that they are edible. Experts often offer their knowledge on fall weekends at markets or community colleges where people can bring their bounty and make sure they haven’t accidentally pick poisonous pieces.
Margit Reimann, a 42-year-old who participated in the tour with her mother, said she was surprised to learn how many edible mushroom varieties there are.
But despite her newly acquired knowledge, she plans to stick to the familiar ones – porcini, butter mushrooms, slippery jacks and bay boletes – when going out to the woods with her kids. During the excursion she learned that colors and grain patterns can’t always be clearly determined.
“I think that if enjoyed in moderation, many of them would be a culinary experience, but I still don’t trust myself,” she said.