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After decades out in the cold, shunned by Western travellers and overshadowed by its faster-moving neighbours, Syria is - slowly - starting to gain the recognition it deserves as a vibrant, fascinating country. And as the country opens up to outsiders, ways to explore it multiply. I had visited Damascus before, but this time I was going to experience it through the eyes of Anissa Helou, chef, broadcaster and writer on the cuisines of the Mediterranean. A Londoner for 20 years, Anissa grew up in Beirut but remembers idyllic childhood summers spent in the Syrian highlands. Now she has returned to launch small-group culinary tours, taking ingredients, cooking styles and methods of production as a starting point to explore and understand this much-misunderstood country.
We began by exploring the suqs. I watched as Anissa strode through the crowded lanes, casting to left and right, stopping to watch an old man cooking omelettes, pausing to ask a passer-by how she prepares her vegetables, picking out oranges from a pile on a barrow. I followed her into the back lanes, where we discovered a half-hidden factory making sugared almonds: a single, bare room lined with great copper drums for turning the toasted nuts in syrup.
The manager, Qusay Sukkari welcomed us.
We spent the day working our way through the different areas of the suq, buying zaatar - a fragrant blend of thyme, marjoram and sesame - in the Suq Al Bzouriya (the 'seeds market'), sampling boiled sweets and sipping fresh mulberry juice. Then we headed over to the Suq Al Tanabel ('lazybones market'), which sells only pre-prepared vegetables: the stalls are piled with bags of sliced carrots, cored squash and ready-chopped herbs - convenience food, Syrian-style.
Eating is a major part of a culinary tour, and we ate in a succession of fabulous restaurants. Particularly memorable was Al Khawali, housed in an eye-popping 14th-century palace in the heart of the Damascus suq, concealed from the street's bustle by beautifully carved wooden doors. Inside, floors of patterned marble led to an airy internal courtyard, with tables laid around a central fountain dotted with jasmine and citrus trees. Anissa ordered a clutch of meze that included alangi (stuffed vine leaves) and exquisite shanklish, a tangy sheep's cheese dusted with pepper and thyme. We dipped and nibbled our way through about eight meze dishes, plus mains of tender grilled lamb: the food - formal, sophisticated, charming - suited the ambience perfectly.
Old Town, in the Christian quarter, was another highlight, serving pungent, fiery muhammara - a spicy dip of chopped walnuts and red pepper - and succulent chicken kebabs.
The tour continued in Aleppo, some four hours north, where we met the vastly knowledgeable Hassan Khouja, a researcher from the Academie Syrienne de la Gastronomie, for a meal at Bazar ash-Sharq, hidden in vaulted cellars just outside the old city walls.
Hassan claimed this was the best kitchen in Aleppo. Its kibbeh nayeh, raw lamb chopped with spices and bulgur wheat - one of the most difficult meze dishes to get right - was superb: soft, moist and earthily flavourful. As we tucked into Aleppan meatballs with quince, Hassan talked about Syria's culinary roots, and how Aleppo's location on the east-west Silk Road historically drew in both Persian and Turkish influences.
Damascus, on the other hand, far to the south and cut off from eastern influence by the desert, always looked more to Lebanese mountain cuisine.
Bypassing Syria's famous ruins for an indulgent week of near-continuous eating and snacking in the company of Anissa, whose knowledge and enthusiasm are boundless, turned out to be a great way to get under the skin of this often hard-to-fathom country. Food is one field where Syria excels, and it deserves to be celebrated.
