“No Translation Necessary”: Hattem Mattar’s Third Culture Barbecue

Hattem Mattar wasn’t all the time a pitmaster.

His father needed him to be an engineer, so he went to highschool and have become simply that. “If your Arab father asks you to do something, you do it,” he instructed me, a pit smoker nonetheless frivolously smoldering behind him.

Mattar labored with a group of Fortune 500 corporations in a profitable profession as an engineer. When he moved into the sphere of oil and gasoline, he discovered himself on a job in Texas. It was then that his life would change with a chunk. Seated with the individuals who finally ended up hiring him, Mattar tried brisket for the primary time. “I was like, my life has been missing ninety percent of its value,” he stated. “It’s just been brisket ever since.”

In the years since that second, his barbecue has taken him world wide—together with the quilt of Esquire Middle East—and he’s been hailed because the world’s first Arab pitmaster. But whether or not it’s at his restaurant and or The Mattar Farm popup in Dubai attracting a whole lot, or on the Giant National Capital BBQ Battle this summer season in Washington, D.C., serving 1000’s, Mattar cooks for everybody like he’s smoking meat in his personal yard within the United Arab Emirates.

“How we treat cooking for friends and family in the backyard versus how we treat cooking for ‘customers’ is actually how we got started,” he stated.

When Mattar first began cooking barbecue within the UAE, it was only for that circle of shut folks in his life having fun with his meals. And then his family and friends introduced their family and friends. And these family and friends introduced their family and friends. With seven levels of separation between him and the folks he was serving, he stated, the subsequent logical step for Mattar was a restaurant.

“To this day we cook in our backyard and in our restaurant in identical fashion, because what got us to the restaurant business in the first place was how we made everyone feel in the backyard.” It was the sensation Mattar had making an attempt brisket in Texas that he has discovered to duplicate within the UAE and world wide. After the chunk that modified his life, he taught himself tips on how to make brisket and determined to return to Texas to make sure he had perfected it.

“The pitmaster term was something that was earned,” he boasted. “You don’t call yourself a pitmaster. Somebody calls you a pitmaster.”

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Camera: Pruitt Allen, Nathan Godwin, Albert Tong

Editing: Nathan Godwin

While Mattar had already traveled across the United States, his apprenticeship in Texas took him into what first appeared as unfamiliar territory. Bastrop, a roughly two-hour drive from Houston, was nothing like Mattar had skilled within the States. 

“It’s not metropolitan. It’s not like a city you’ve been to and traveled to before. I didn’t know what to expect, and I didn’t know if I’d be welcome,” Mattar stated. “But the friends that I made on that apprenticeship still exist to this day.”

The similarities between Bastrop and the place he grew up 1000’s of miles away have been clearer than one could think about.

“The familiarity between growing up in the UAE, and being raised in the Middle East in general, and what I saw in the American South is the sense of your neighbor first and community,” Mattar stated. “It felt very similar actually. A lot of the same belief systems exist, even though they’re named different things. They’re almost identical.”

This discovery of cultural similarities grew to become the core of Mattar’s cooking ethos: that barbecue may very well be a bridge between every kind of individuals.        

Bringing a quintessentially American delicacies from the guts of Texas all the way in which to the UAE posed quite a lot of obstacles of its personal, all the way down to essentially the most fundamental elements of the meals.

“The challenge to bring barbecue to the UAE is essentially what makes barbecue, barbecue,” he stated. “The first ingredient is wood. We’re in the desert. There’s no wood.”

Without easy accessibility to the fitting wooden⁠—which Mattar famous in demonstrations all through the Festival is crucial to the proper barbecue⁠—and no industrial beef farms within the UAE, discovering these parts persistently sufficient to run a restaurant proved to be very tough.

What was clear from the beginning, nonetheless, was how American barbecue can be translated into Arab delicacies and flavors. “The idea was always to spice it differently,” Mattar stated. Bringing Emirati spices and date-based barbecue sauce to the dish has helped make the delicacies the area’s personal. And within the UAE, residing and visiting Americans will discover Mattar’s restaurant, The Farm House, for a style of dwelling. But as a substitute of their ordinary aspect of corn and baked beans, clients get their barbecue with a aspect of mandi rice or goat cheese mac and cheese.

Serving all with a common imaginative and prescient of delicacies, Mattar and his brisket have change into a staple of cultural connection and dialog within the UAE. His work has elevated him to the standing of culinary diplomat for each the UAE Embassy in Washington, D.C., and for the U.S. Mission to the UAE. “We’ve got bilateral barbecue relations going on,” Mattar quipped throughout a meals demonstration on the Festival Foodways tent.

With a ardour for cross-cultural cooperation and discovery, Mattar’s involvement on this 12 months’s Folklife Festival falls according to all of the work he’s executed and desires to proceed to do. Throughout the latter half of the Festival, he hosted cooking demonstrations the place he shared cooking suggestions, tales, and traditions from the UAE with the viewers.

“Do you guys know what we all have in common?” he requested the gathered crowd throughout one session.

“Barbecue!” they responded in a laughing refrain.

Critical to Mattar’s presentation was getting throughout this concept of each the native and world neighborhood round a plate.

“You never light the barbecue for one person. You’re not lighting a barbecue for one hot dog,” he identified, displaying items of meat within the mirror above the demonstration kitchen. “If you are, please see me after. We should have a conversation about this.”

According to Mattar, the rationale barbecue is the good connector is as a result of each tradition has a live-fire delicacies. Even vegetarian cultures, he says, put their greens on the barbecue. “If you put barbecue on the table, it automatically invites the entire planet—regardless of race, religion, color. It invites the entire planet to sit down,” he stated.

And whereas Mattar used his platform on the Festival to show his viewers about region-specific traditions and Arab hospitality, his central focus was how barbecue transcends and unites completely different cultural identities. The concept of “third culture barbecue” is how Mattar explains the intersection of various cultures and cuisines below the banner of barbecue, and it’s a signature of his restaurant.

“We call it third culture barbecue because I’m originally Egyptian, born in Egypt, raised in the UAE, educated in Canada,” he stated at an indication. “It is a cuisine that is from somewhere, raised somewhere, but born somewhere else. And that’s essentially what we’re trying to do: put that on a plate.”

It’s clear Mattar believes barbecue has the ability to do the form of cultural connecting that anthropologists dream of. When I requested him if there was a time he felt that energy was significantly salient, he appeared across the Folklife Festival.

“This moment right now,” he stated. “This moment right here feels like barbecue has been a bridge to come to D.C. to spend time with the Smithsonian, to spend time with you guys. To learn about other delegates that are here and what barbecue means to them.”

The Festival was a touchdown level for what would change into Mattar’s tour across the United States , taking him to California, Louisiana, Colorado, New York, and, in fact, Texas. Feeding folks throughout America, he’s observed that the “new” flavors in his meals spark conversations with individuals who in any other case couldn’t pinpoint the UAE on a map.

At the Giant National Capital BBQ Battle in June, simply down the road from the Festival, Mattar stated his crew served over 5,000 folks their very own twist on barbecue. “When we put that plate to people, it was instantly recognizable that this was brisket,” he stated at an indication. Then, when clients requested questions concerning the spices, they might begin speaking about Emirati spices and Emirati identification. “Then all of a sudden it’s a conversation about where we’re from sparked by a plate.”

And that dialog is one which transcends any distinct language.

“We all speak the same language,” Mattar stated. “No translation necessary: barbecue.”

With no language barrier, the mission of hospitality is way simpler. And when it’s concerning the tradition and the folks, Mattar is completely happy to serve. “Being in hospitality, there’s obviously the financial aspect that keeps your regular day-to-day life running, but there is an emotional aspect that you can’t compare to the corporate jobs,” he stated. Crafting particular meals moments and constructing these connections, “that’s something that you can’t quantify,” he stated.