Courtesy of Conflict Kitchen

“We could run this kitchen indefinitely.”

Despite what you may think, this is not a completely positive thing.

Jon Rubin, the man behind this declaration, teaches contextual practice at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. When he’s not in the classroom, he spends a lot of time in a Waffle Shop near campus. The Waffle Shop, a hybrid business, live art installation and classroom, invites diners to eat waffles and participate in a live talk show filmed in-house (see some of the talk show HERE). The kitchen attached to the Waffle Shop has a separate entrance and, after a late night, Jon and a few friends thought it might be interesting to transform the take-out window into the “worst idea for an ethnic food restaurant” possible.

The brainstorming began. Someone yelled “North Korean!” A few head shakes later, the group met eyes and thought, “Yes. North Korean.”

Conflict Kitchen was born soon thereafter. The idea is this: pick a country and focus on one element of its cuisine, consult with local immigrants about life and food in that country and increase the city’s knowledge of the nation through the most visceral way possible–food.

Every four months, the Conflict Kitchen will rotate nations.

Courtesy of Conflict Kitchen

Right now it’s Iran, next is Afghanistan. Ideas for the future include Venezuela and Cuba.

This month’s focus on Persian cuisine took the Conflict Kitchen folks deep into the heart of Pittsburgh’s Persian community. In collaboration with Pitt’s Persians, Conflict Kitchen staff researched possible cuisine choices and tested and tested again. The results: THE KUBIDEH. This five-dollar sandwich is cradled by homemade barbari bread, a Persian flatbread, and is filled with spiced beef, mint, fresh basil and onion.

The wrapper is another story altogether. Beautifully designed, it features blurbs collected and written by students ranging in a wide variety subjects–everything from tea to women’s rights, Iran’s relationship with Israel to typical bread.

Courtesy of Conflict Kitchen

Research and culinary duties are performed by work-study students from Carnegie Mellon; both The Waffle Shop and Conflict Kitchen are non-profits supported by the university. Programming developed by and for students is also a large component of the project.

Two weekends ago, the Conflict Kitchen hosted a live Skype Dinner (naturally, with food from the take-out window) with young people in Iran. Items on the discussion menu: social change, misconceptions about one another’s nation, politics and, of course, food.

What’s your suggestion for their next “conflict-infused” pick?