Q&A: Palestinian chef brings traditional cooking and food history to Vancouver Island
Izzeldin Bukhari speaks on the origin of falafel, Gaza’s rummaniyeh and why he sees food as a way to hold on to a culture under threat.
BY ERIC RICHARDS – LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER ● COMOX VALLEY ● JULY 8, 2026
Izzeldin Bukhari is a Jerusalem-based Palestinian chef who specializes in Somi cuisine — the Palestinian tradition of vegan and vegetarian cooking associated with spiritual fasting.
With his first ever Canadian tour, he aims to highlight the resilience and cultural richness of Palestine through long table dinners, cooking classes and storytelling.
Bukhari will be in Campbell River on July 11 hosting Tasting Resistance — a history of Palestinian food, and in the Comox Valley for a dinner and talk at the Comox United Church on July 14.
He will also be on Hornby Island on July 17 and Salt Spring Island on July 20.
A full list of tour dates is available on the Sacred Cuisine Canada Tour website.
The Discourse caught up with Bukhari while he was in Revelstoke to find out what he has in store for attendees, why he continues to champion Palestinian culture and how he creates connection through food.
Note: Responses have been lightly edited for grammar and concision.
Eric Richards, The Discourse: Can you tell me about Sacred Cuisine and what was behind the creation of it?
I was in the process of wanting to create a business for food and I was trying to figure out my options. One day I had a question about falafel and I felt there was an idea behind the recipe, it wasn’t something just discovered by mistake. I asked around where I eat falafel and at the hummus shops and this and that, and nobody was able to give me an answer.
I continued to look and then I found the story. Basically, the Coptic Christians of Egypt are the ones who came up with the falafel as a food for Lent, the Christian fasting. This is like a thousand years ago. When I found this story, I was really happy but at the same time I was a bit upset that I didn’t know the story of something that we eat almost every day. So I decided to focus on food history.
I wanted to make the company Sacred Cuisine based on the Somi food concept to make a bold statement of what Somi food is, how it affected Palestinians and the stories behind the dishes. So it came out of my own interest of looking into food history, especially Somi food, and sharing that culture and learning about it myself.
Your mother’s family was displaced to Gaza in 1948, and you spent time visiting your grandmother there as a child. How do the specific flavours and cuisines of Gaza weave into the broader Palestinian culinary narrative you share today?
Because it’s been isolated since the 2000’s Gaza always had its unique kind of flavor and situation. For example, there is a dish that I used to eat at my grandma’s called rummaniyeh and it’s a dish made out of eggplant, lentils and dill seeds and also, a salad which is a spicy salad with tomato, chili, onion and also dill seeds.
But these dishes, I only ate them in Gaza. My mom would make them also from time to time but Gaza was the place where I ate them the most. So when I went to Gaza, even as a kid, it was a totally different portfolio of food. Even though in some ways the food is similar, Gazans have their own dishes that they make. And these two dishes kind of stayed in my mind because they were very special in flavor. These dishes became some of the dishes that I cook when I’m traveling and abroad, because I want to bring these flavors and I want people to know about these flavors and to try them.
You frequently say “food and narratives are intertwined.” When you host your events, how do the stories of the ingredients themselves act as a form of cultural preservation and peaceful resistance.
First of all, when I do my events, it’s two parts: one is the food and one is the storytelling. The food gives the opportunity for people to try, and the story will elaborate on the dishes they ate. It will explain what’s behind them and also any narrative or cultural things that come with it.
It’s like one package when I am doing an event for people to get them to know about Palestinian culinary heritage as well as Palestinian culture in general. And just through sharing my story, I am able to shed light on a lot of things — either political, religious or cultural or even my personal life growing up, to shed more light on the geographic and political restrictions that we have as Palestinians.
I feel preservation is a big part of resistance. As a Palestinian, I am very aware that my culture is under continuous threat of them [Israel] trying to delete our narrative history, confiscate the land and kick people out of their property. So from looking at the history of the Palestinian people and also my grandma and many others who lost homes and lands, it’s just been a continuous loss that we face as Palestinians. So I feel the least I can do is to preserve what I can.
I cannot preserve the land, I cannot fight and protect the land. But what I can do, I can share the story where I preserve that narrative — even my mother’s family history. To preserve the stories and how they come up and their life, it’s the best I know how to do in this situation to resist this ongoing threat to my culture.
Here in Canada, there are ongoing conversations led by Indigenous communities about food sovereignty — the idea that traditional food and cooking are inseparable from cultural survival, land rights and healing. Given that you have noted how Palestinians are becoming increasingly disconnected from their land, their own crops and traditional ingredients, how do you view the parallel struggles between Indigenous culinary preservation here and the defence of Palestinian food heritage back home?
You know, that’s an interesting question because I can relate so much to First Nations, to the Indigenous people here, and what they went through. And learning more about it and getting educated about it, I see a very similar pattern. The difference is the timeline.
The original nations over here, they went through this. And now they are in a stage where people are trying to acknowledge what has been done and they’re trying to close the gap and they’re trying to fix it in a way. While back home, it is completely the opposite — there is no acknowledgement of that.
When I look at Canada or the United States, I can see what Palestine can be in the future and maybe at the end there will be some recognition.
What do you hope people walk away with after experiencing a Sacred Cuisine event?
In general, my aim for the tour in the first place is to give the opportunity for people to try Palestinian food, to try Middle Eastern food. And also I always work in a way of bringing the unknown so, even if a person has tried Palestinian food, I want to make sure that I bring them something new. So my approach is to always look into these dishes that are probably not that popular, but they’re still delicious, and have a story in them. I’m always trying to give people more of an experience that comes from being in my shoes. Not from just the tourist point of view. I want to bring them closer to what a local person might experience: border restriction and checkpoints and such.
So for example, a lot of people will maybe go to a restaurant and they will try falafel. But how many people are going to come away with a story? And this is what I want. I want them to know the story and I heard it a lot from different people who came to my events. They’re like, ‘oh, we were eating falafel, and I told my friends about the origin stories of falafel and they were really intrigued by the story.’ So because it’s exciting, I also feel people take the initiative to tell these stories and share it with others. And that’s exactly my goal is for them to share these stories with their people as well.
Can you give us a sneak peek into what guests will be preparing and eating?
So I have the rummaniyeh and the daghha salad, the dishes I talked about earlier. They are a first course, usually on my dinners, so people get to experience them, try them. The second course is usually a rice dish. Most of the time it’s maqluba. It is another famous Palestinian dish, very Palestinian. This is usually what they experience, also with the dessert at the end.