Delicious invasion

by Nicola Shepherd

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HAILED�as the latest undiscovered food fad, Lebanese mezze (mixed starters)�are�causing the juices to flow for some of the UK's top restaurant critics.

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Once dismissed as either kebab dens, or catering exclusively for the expat�community, the delights of Lebanese and Persian cuisine are set to invade the farthest corners of our country.

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Soon the British suburbs will be havens to such mouth-watering delights as shish barrack (lamb ravioli with pine nuts); yakh'nit sumas (poached fillet of swordfish with tomato, onion and saffron served with almond couscous); kibbeh nayeh (ground lamb tartare with burghul); and a dessert menu featuring rosewater macerated melon, date and lemon souffle and milk puddings with cardamom syrup.

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Eastern European�cuisine is also set to become the next big food fad. Just like the Irish in New York in the nineteenth century, refugees from Eastern Europe,�finding that the easiest work to come by was waiting at the tables of London's top restaurants, are now setting up food establishments.

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A good example is Patio in London's Goldhawk Road started in 1986 by a Polish waiter from the London Hilton.��Back then, beetroot� and Bigos (smoked sausage and beef stew) didn't go down too well on the menu, but nowadays the dishes are 99% Polish.

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Fast food to take away is often the first introduction the British public, notoriously reticent about foreign food, has to new tastes. Chinese and Indian achieved the status of cuisine in this country by starting out in polystyrene trays to go.

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It is the same with Polish food. Pierogi, those famous little crescent-shaped Polish dumplings, filled with pork or cream cheese or cabbage, have given us the taste for more from the East Europen kitchen. Pierogi have done for Polish cuisine what caviar has�done for Russian and felafel for Israeli cuisines.

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A country's food gives more than a flavour of its history. Food preservation by means of cellar storage, pickling or immersing in fat was an Eastern European necessity before refrigeration. In the same way the 'mother of invention' principle applied to the humble Cornish pastie - a portable self-contained meal in itself that could easily be taken down the tin mine and consumed without either plate or cutlery.