Love, War, and the Magical Lamb-Brain Sandwiches of Aleppo, Syria

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Adam Davidson was a reporter in Baghdad during the Iraq War, he started dating a fellow-reporter, Jen Banbury, of Salon. On a holiday break, they left the war zone and traveled to Aleppo, Syria—then a beautiful, ancient, bustling city—and, while there, they ate the best sandwiches that they had ever had. They were shockingly good, so much so that Adam and Jen never quite registered what was in them or where they came from. The couple, now married, told this story to many friends over the years, but none was more interested than Dan Pashman, the host of the food podcast “The Sporkful.” Fascinated by the mystery, Pashman set out on a quest to find and re-create the sandwiches. He talked to Syrian emigrés, a political refugee, and finally to Imad Serjieh, the owner of the family sandwich shop that bears his last name. Pashman found that the Serjieh sandwiches—preferably the one made with boiled, spiced lamb brain—aren’t just a local favorite; they capture the essence of the city, and, as long as they are still being made, Pashman thinks, Aleppo lives. Plus, the writer and monologuist Jenny Allen has something she’d like to say to you—or, rather, some things she’d like you to stop saying.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a real trait to balance.
0:03.0	The one world observatory,
0:06.0	straight of the block for West Boulevard and makes that right.
0:09.0	I basically just think it would be interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy.
0:14.0	And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles of her out there.
0:19.0	This really subversive, strange thing, in rap especially,
0:22.5	and see what their lives are like on websites of the world.
0:26.7	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour,
0:31.3	a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:35.3	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:37.2	I'm David Remnick.
0:38.3	I'm going to turn things over now to staff writer Adam Davidson.
0:42.6	Adam covers business and politics and what happens when you've got a businessman in the White House.
0:48.6	Adam's also been a war correspondent covering the Iraq War for Marketplace and he worked for NPR.
0:54.1	But right now, he's dying to tell us about a sandwich.
0:58.8	This isn't just any sandwich.
1:00.9	This is the best sandwich I've ever had.
1:04.3	And I've never had the experience before of while eating a sandwich thinking this changes what a sandwich can be.
1:16.4	This changes how I'm going to think about sandwiches for the rest of my life.
1:21.0	Yeah, this was at the end of 2003.
1:24.1	And my wife and I, well, she was my girlfriend at the time. We were reporters in
1:29.5	Baghdad and we took a Christmas vacation.
	...

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