Conflict of interest: Café promotes dialogue

Words: Jonna Dagliden
Visuals: Philip Gamble

Pittsburgh – A new take-away restaurant aims to prompt conversations with diners about the countries in conflict with the US.

Iranian restaurant Kubideh Kitchen is Conflict Kitchen’s? first iteration, and serves kubideh – Iranian grilled meat – in barbari bread with onion, mint and basil. The blue, yellow and green wrapper contains writing about topics such as poetry, fashion and nuclear power in Iran. The food is served from a blue and yellow take-away-style store front, which will rotate every four months to highlight another country.

The project is run by artists John Peña, Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski.

‘For us, it’s not about being experts in Afghanistan, North Korea or Venezuela. It’s a chance for the public to start thinking,’ says Rubin.

This is a great example of the entrepreneurial mindset that LS:N Global explores in the Betapreneurs report.