Manna from Heaven, or just off the menu?

Who knew?

The Washington Post: Is this biblical food the next foodie fad? This chef thinks so.

Last year, as Todd Gray and his wife, Ellen Kassoff, prepared to open their 165-seat, Mediterranean-inspired restaurant at the Museum of the Bible, they faced a culinary conundrum. The name they had settled on for the eatery was Manna, a reference to the food God sent down to the Israelites after their escape from Egypt in the Bible. But if the restaurant was to be called Manna, they wanted to be able to serve it to their guests. “Oh my gosh,” Gray recalls thinking. “Where are we going to get manna?”

Answering that question depends on how you define manna, which could be its own concentration in biblical studies and ethnobotany. Even in the book of Exodus, the Israelites didn’t know what it was at first…

I was pleased to learn:

  1. In the Koran, the Prophet spoke favorably about truffle as a form of manna.

  2. Manna, at least in some forms, looks just like Grape-Nuts.