Part pizza, part smash burger, this delicious flatbread is controversial

The dish

Lahmajun, Middle East

One thing at least is settled - this dish is delicious.Credit: Getty Images

Plate up

There’s awkwardness here we should acknowledge. Food is a wonderful thing, tied so indelibly to history, culture and identity. That also means food can be a source of conflict. Welcome to the world of lahmajun. We’ll get into the origins but first, let’s describe the dish. It’s a very thin flatbread covered with a layer of lamb mince richly flavoured with the likes of tomatoes, garlic, parsley, allspice, paprika and cumin, plus minced capsicum and onion. This bread is then placed in a blistering hot oven – wood-fired, if you have it – until crisp, then topped with a salad of onions, parsley, sumac and lemon juice, cut into slices or rolled into a kebab shape and absolutely monstered. It’s a little like a pizza, kind of like a smash burger, yet unique and delicious.

First serve

Where does lahmajun come from? You will find it referred to as “Armenian pizza”, but also as “Turkish pizza”. This is a dish Armenians are fiercely proud of; however, when an Armenian restaurant opened in Russia in 2016 and began serving lahmajun as native cuisine, there was uproar in Turkey. These two nations have very fragile relations, and lahmajun has come to represent this conflict. The dish’s true history is murky: flatbreads have been cooked in the wider Middle East, particularly by nomadic peoples of the Levant, for thousands of years. Lahmajun became popular during the years of the Ottoman Empire, a region that took in Turkey, and Armenia, and Syria and Lebanon and Iraq and Egypt. So whose is this dish? Um …

Order there

Well, this is fraught. We’ve never featured Armenia in this column, so let’s say you should grab your lahmajun from Elie’s Lahmajun in Yerevan (no website).

Order here

Sydneysiders can grab an excellent lahmajun at Taste of Turkey in Newtown (tasteofturkey.com.au). For those in Melbourne, check out the soon-to-open Zareh, by Armenian-Egyptian chef Tom Sarafian (instagram.com/zareh.melbourne). In Brisbane, Mado is your spot (madorestaurant.com.au).

One more thing

There are plenty more controversial foods out there. Try Hainanese chicken rice (Malaysian or Singaporean), hummus (multiple countries), falafel (also multiple), pisco (Chile and Peru), and the most passionately fought over: pavlova.