AMMAN, Jordan – The idea struck the restaurateur like a bolt of lightning after he spilled food on his suit while eating in his car.
What if he took Jordan’s national dish – a milky mountain of mutton and rice called mansaf, traditionally eaten by the hand of a large communal dish – and sold it in a paper cup to diners on the way?
The restaurateur, Muhammad Taher, soon opened his first store, Our Mansaf in a Cup, which offers takeaway portions at the bargain price of one dinar, about $ 1.40. Business flourished, and three more branches followed.
“People were surprised at first,” recalls Mr. Taher, 52. But tasting was believable, and he said some customers blew up: “‘Bless you for feeding us something we’ve been craving for so long.’
However, not everyone praised his culinary innovation in this conservative Arab monarchy where traditions such as manhood are now linked to national identity.
Copycat showed up and in mr. Taher’s profits cut, even as traditionalist restaurants accused him of humiliating national law and eroding the nation’s cultural foundations.
“Destruction begins with small details,” warned Abdul-Hadi al-Majali, a newspaper columnist who diverted the idea of man into a cup.
“What’s happening is not just a matter of food, but a way of mocking the people’s heritage,” he said. al-Majali added. “And when you mock the heritage of a people in this way, it is a prelude to the trivialization of what is most important and the dilution or dissolution of identity.”
The man-made dust-up has plagued the kingdom for the past two years, pitting traditionalists against innovators, those who eat with their hands against those who eat in their cars, and the question arises how much a culinary tradition can change before it carrots.
For Muhammad al-Tarawneh, a mansaf chef in the central Jordanian town of Karak, who considered the court’s homeland, the answer was clear: Mansaf in a cup is simply wrong.
“They took away the dignity of men,” he said.
Mr. al-Tarawneh recently spoke in the busy kitchen where he and his 15 employees gather massive groups of traditional men for weddings, funerals and other special occasions. That day’s order was for about a thousand wedding guests, so the preparation began the previous day with the slaughter of 73 sheep to produce a ton and a half of mutton.
To make the man down, the meat on the bone was cooked in large metal kettles. The cooks dissolved large white balls of a dehydrated mutton yogurt, known as jam, in giant pots to make a salty, milky soup.
When the meat was partially cooked, the cooks drained the water in which it was cooked and replaced it with the milky mixture. The meat boiled in the milk until tender, making the distinctive man-down combination.
When everything was ready, the chefs gathered the dishes.
Over a layer of flatbread on large, round metal plates, they piled up heaps of rice cooked with ghee, garnished it with milky meat, and garnished it all with roasted nuts. The plates – a total of about 200 – were covered with foil and loaded into a fleet of bowls that transported the delicacy to the wedding.
More than a thousand men showed up for lunch, in a square of large tents full of small tables on the edge of town. A smaller number of female guests ate separately at the groom’s house.
When it was time to eat, workers handed out the dishes while one enthusiastic diner fired his gun into the air – a tradition the Jordanian government tried to eradicate with heavy fines.
Strict rules guide eating men, says Muhammad al-Tarawneh, a Karak lawyer who is not closely related to the chef.
“Mansaf here stood, his own rites and rituals,” he said.
I removed the foil and poured extra milk over the rice, which added flavor and made it easier to eat.
Mansaf is often eaten standing up, which according to experts allows you to eat more. With only their right hands, the eaters pulled meat off the bones, squeezed it into balls with rice and milk, and pressed it into their mouths.
Because many people share the same tray, every meal eats directly in front of him: Reaching over the serving plates is rejected.
Often the sheep’s head is placed in the middle of the dish. His cheeks, eyes, brain and tongue are highly regarded and intended for the table’s most important guest.
Few men at the wedding had any interest in mansaf in a cup.
“No way,” said Mr. al-Tarawneh, the lawyer. “We respect men.”
Ahmad al-Jafari, a retired principal, said he ate a light breakfast to make room for men, a common practice. The mere idea of mansaf in a cup made him uneasy.
“It is more blessed when people gather to eat instead of eating alone,” he said. al-Jafari (70) said.
The man-in-a-cup experiment began in the capital, Amman, along a street full of cars blaring pop music and pedestrians navigating to the shoes, clothes, jewelry and other goods displayed on the sidewalks.
It was here, in early 2020, that Mr.
Others saw his success, imitators soon appeared in Amman and other cities and Mr. Taher eventually closed its business.
Two stores are now competing for business where his once stood.
The orange plate over one of those competitors, Mansaf in a cup, boasts a cartoon of a smiling Jordanian man displaying his meal. The neighboring Uncle’s Mansaf in a Cup has a giant yellow sign with flashing lights in the colors of the Jordanian flag.
In another confrontation with tradition, both stores use beef instead of mutton. This is because beef is cheaper and cooked without bones, making it easy to eat with a spoon. And instead of being cooked together, the meat and milk are cooked separately.
Two curious teenagers ordered at the first store, and his chef, Islam Adli, 23, filled two paper cups with rice, added three pieces of meat and a few nuts, pressed plastic spoons and poured milk over the top of a plastic jar.
Mr. Adli discussed the benefits: You can eat it on the go; vegetarians could order it without meat; and it was cheap – a great option for Jordanians with a budget or far from home.
In the other shop, chef Muhammad al-Bitoush, 29, dismissed the haters. But he also admitted that he was from Karak and did not tell his family what he was selling, to avoid controversy.
“The idea that men from the dish ended up in a cup will bother them,” he said.
A steady stream of eaters flooded in.
Waed Faouri (25) and her mother ordered two cups of men’s which she described as “proper and delicious”.
“Yes, we cook for men at home, but sometimes when you visit outside your house, you long for men,” she said.
Later that evening, Nayef al-Jaar, the manager of Uncle’s Mansaf in a Cup, said he was concerned that the novelty of mansaf to go was declining and demand was waning.
“In the beginning, people stood in line for it,” he said. “Now, I have to beg people to eat men down.”
So he came up with a new idea that he hoped would bring the crowd back: sweet potatoes in a cup with ketchup, mayonnaise and nacho cheese.