Nadia Aoun

Nadia Aoun grew up in a Lebanese household in Montreal — which means she has been eating kibbeh nayyeh, fattoush, and properly made hummus since before she knew the words for any of them. She has been writing about Middle Eastern and North African food across North America for eight years, with a particular focus on the Lebanese, Moroccan, Turkish, Greek, and Persian restaurant communities that have built some of the most serious cooking in Montreal, Toronto, and New York without always receiving the critical attention they deserve. Her work centres on authenticity in a specific sense: not the nostalgic version, but the culinary one — whether the kitchen has understood the tradition it is working in deeply enough to make decisions rather than follow a template. She is one of the few North American food writers who covers Moroccan bastilla and Turkish pide with the same depth she brings to Lebanese mezze, and her guides to the Middle Eastern and North African dining scenes of Montreal and New York are widely read in both cities. Before TastyPals, she contributed food criticism to a Montreal bilingual food publication and wrote a column on North African cooking for a Canadian national magazine.

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