BIOGRAPHY

ANISSA HELOU (www.anissas.com) is a chef, food writer, journalist, broadcaster, and consultant focusing on the cuisines and culinary heritage of the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa, and most recently the Islamic world.

Born and raised between Beirut, Lebanon, and Mashta el-Helou, Syria, she is the author of numerous award-winning cookbooks. One of her most famous writings, Mediterranean Street Food was chosen by Cooking Light magazine as one of the top 100 cookbooks of the last 25 years. Savory Baking from the Mediterranean, was chosen by NPR, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Food & Wine as one of the best cookbooks for 2007 and Levant was chosen as best of the year by several publications including the Observer Food Monthly and Australian Gourmet Traveller. Her new book, Feast: The Food of the Islamic World, was chosen by the New Yorker as one of the 10 best cookbooks of the century so far.

She was also the winner of the Foodics Icon Award for Middle East and North Africa’s 50 Best Restaurants 2023 and she is known in Italy for having been a guest judge on Masterchef Italia. She was also listed in 2013 in the Arabian Business Magazine as one of the “100 Most Powerful Arab Women” and on the “500 Most Influential Arabs”.

In 2013 Helou collaborated with a group of Egyptian entrepreneurs to open “Koshari Street” in the londoner Covent Garden where they serve her gourmet version of Koshari, the ultimate and most famous Egyptian street food.

Anissa Helou nowadays lives between Sicily, where she opened a cooking school, and London.