This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. One of the first lessons restaurateur rose Prevet learned early in life was what she calls the secret code, the ways her family used food to hold on to culture.

Prevet grew up in a small town in Ohio

eating almost exclusively home-cooked Lebanese dishes that were passed down

from her great grandparents who immigrated to the US. But as she writes in her new cookbook, My Don, recipes

from Lebanon and beyond, it took a life-changing move to Russia for her to discover that following

in her family's footsteps was her calling.

In her new cookbook, which Bonapetit recently named one of the best cookbooks of the year,

Prevet shares some of her family's tried and true recipes, as well as recipes from home cooked throughout the

Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Many of these recipes come from areas we often think of as conflict in war zones like Lebanon,

Georgia, and Ukraine.

Private owns four DC area restaurants,

compass rows which serve street food from around the world,

like Jamaican curried conch, Mexican tacos, El Pastor, and Algerian vegetable

Tajin. The Kirby Club in Virginia which specializes in kebabs and the

Michelin Star-rated My Don, which serves food from Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East.

She also runs the neighboring cocktail bar, Medina.

Rose Prevet, welcome to Fresh Air.

Thank you for having me.

That was a kind introduction.

Mydon is such a rich word, because as we learn from you,

it's a word that carries across regions and languages and it means the same thing.

...