Enemy Kitchen

Enemy Kitchen is an ongoing project by Michael Rakowitz in which he collaborated with his Iraqi-Jewish mother to compiles Baghdadi recipes and then teaches these recipes to different public audiences.

Memorial Day 2009 we collaborated together to bring Enemy Kitchen to the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum (now the National Veterans Art Museum) where veterans of the Iraq War learned how to make Iraqi BBQ.

We resumed the collaboration in 2012 for the Smart Museum of Art's FEAST exhibition. In this iteration of Enemy Kitchen Iraq Veterans Against the War, chefs from Chicago’s Iraqi community, and Michael collaborated to launch an Enemy Kitchen food truck.  A few days each week, the Enemy Kitchen food truck traveled around the city serving a rotating menu of regional Iraqi dishes, with members of Iraq Veterans Against the War acting as servers and sous-chefs. The food was served on limited-edition, paper reproductions of china found in Saddam Hussein's palaces.​