Our Cultural Commitments

When Sofra earns, Faten earns. Quietly. Regularly. Without paperwork that wouldn't reflect how this actually came to be. The agreement is friendship-based, not contract-based. We chose this because Faten is our neighbour first and our contributor second, and because what she gave us — years of recipes, patience for re-tests, permission to publish — was given as a neighbour gives, not as a contributor signs.

By her preference. We don't publish it. Journalists who ask are told the same.

The 44 Idlib recipes in the app are explicitly credited to Faten as their source. They are her family's home cooking. We are the scribes.

Every recipe — title, ingredients, full step-by-step instructions, photo, cultural context — is free. There is no recipe paywall. There never will be. The recipes belong to the kitchens that taught them; we don't gate access to a heritage we are stewards of, not owners of.

If you have to interrupt a cook with an ad, you've lost something. Sofra will not run banner ads, video ads, sponsored recipes, or affiliate placements that compromise the cooking experience. We are funded by an optional membership; nothing else.

Membership ($3.99/month, $29.99/year, $79.99 lifetime; R$9,90/79,90/199 in Brazil) unlocks Lebanese-Arabic voice narration by Layla, Faten's family memories as short audio notes, oud music composed by Charbel Rouhana while you cook, offline access, and a cooking assistant. The recipes themselves remain free.

We collect what's needed for the app to work and for us to know how it's being used (Google Play install metrics, anonymous Vercel analytics on this website). We don't sell data, don't share with advertisers, don't run cross-app tracking pixels. Privacy policy: sofrabeirut.com/privacy.

Sofra's recipes are recorded by founder Tom Hornig from Faten's kitchen in Beirut and from Lebanese family kitchens across the diaspora. The ingredients and cooking techniques in each recipe are facts — kibbeh has bulgur and lamb, tabbouleh is overwhelmingly parsley with lemon, hummus needs tahini — and facts about a cuisine are not owned by any single author. The cultural context, descriptions, and narrative voice around each recipe are Sofra's own writing. We do not copy prose from published cookbooks. If you believe we have inadvertently paraphrased your published work, please write to us at support@sofrabeirut.com. We will rewrite, credit, or remove as appropriate, and we will say so on this page.

If we know the contributor of a recipe, we credit them. For unattributed heritage recipes — dishes carried by generations without a single named author — the attribution reads "Lebanese Heritage Kitchen." We never invent a contributor. We never claim authorship of a dish that belongs to a cuisine.

We do not claim to be the first to value Idlib cooking, nor the first to write about it. Idlib has always been folded into pan-Syrian and Aleppo cookbooks. What we claim — and we claim it carefully — is to be the first dedicated English-language collection that surfaces Idlib home cooking as its own kitchen, rather than as a sub-region of broader Syrian categories. The claim is "first dedicated English collection," not "first documentation." If you are an Idlib daughter, son, neighbour, or scholar and we got something wrong, please write to us at support@sofrabeirut.com. We will correct it and credit you.

Charbel Rouhana — one of Lebanon's most respected oud masters — composed the cooking-mode music for our family, pro bono, as a gift. The piece is not for sale. It is not licensed. It plays only inside the app, only during cooking mode, and only with permission. We will not release it as a single, syndicate it to streaming services, or use it outside the app's cooking-mode flow.

If your family makes kibbeh differently than the recipe in the app, your family's version is also right. We document one tradition — Faten's — with care. We don't claim it's the only correct way to make any dish. The app's notes acknowledge regional and family variations where we know them.