How a Restaurant in Cyprus Is Bridging the Country's Divide

Though we often think of food as merely a necessity or a pleasure, it can serve loftier goals. There’s even a term for the use of food to bridge cultural differences: gastrodiplomacy. Through cuisine, people can learn about countries or cultures about which they may have skewed or narrow views. Pittsburgh’s Conflict Kitchen and Detroit’s Peace Meal Kitchen, for instance, educate their clientele about locales such as Palestine, North Korea, and Iran through dishes and events that delve into the places’ people and history.

Cyprus’s Home Café, which sits in the middle of a conflict that’s been going on for more than 40 years, may be the world’s best-placed eatery for gastrodiplomacy. It not only educates its customers about each other—it literally brings them together in the no man’s land that separates them.