Cypriot vs Libyan food & cuisine

Cyprus shares many flavors with its neighbors, but its cuisine has a character of its own. Meals often revolve around meze, small dishes served all at once, fresh local ingredients, plenty of mint and olive oil, and a fondness for slow-cooked food. Bread, sausages, and halloumi cheese show up everywhere, from breakfast to dinner.

Libyan cuisine overlaps with Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, mostly with staple olives, olive oil, dates, lamb, beef, beans, nuts, couscous, tagine and shakshouka. Libya eats less cereal than its Maghreb neighbours but consumes more fat, meat, and seafood. Animal-origin foods make up about 33 % of its diet, far above neighboring countries. Tea drinking is a daily social ritual.

Wheat dominates, as it does across the Mediterranean, but Cyprus uses a wider mix of grains, including barley, corn, and rice. Wheat remains essential for pita, a thick, oval, oven-baked bread eaten daily.

Most Libyan meals start with a familiar base like couscous, pasta, rice or barley. Wheat shows up in many forms, especially breads and porridges. People still prepare dough the way their ancestors did, using simple ground grains that turn into hearty, comforting food. These doughs and breads do more than fill the plate. They carry sauces, balance strong flavors and make meals feel complete.

Cypriot cooking leans heavily on vegetables, but meat, dairy, and grains often balance or even outweigh them. Vegetables show up in salads, stews, and alongside grilled foods, usually dressed with lemon and olive oil. A typical summer salad mixes celery leaves and stalks, parsley, coriander, tomatoes, and cucumber. Purslane and wild dandelion greens are also popular.

Vegetables matter a lot in everyday cooking. Tomatoes, onions and garlic form the base, often with sweet or chili peppers, zucchini, eggplant, pumpkin or leafy greens. Tomatoes are so important in Libyan cuisine that the country is among the top five tomato consumers per capita in the world! Vegetable proteins come mostly from pulses: chickpeas, lentils, dried beans and fava beans. These appear as falafels, bean soups, and bean-and-vegetable stews.

Livestock farming has long shaped Cypriot agriculture and diet. Many villages lie inland, sometimes far from the coast, and this distance from the sea historically tied people to animal husbandry. Pork became the dominant meat, prepared through charcoal grilling, sausages, and preservation with smoke and wine. Red wine, in fact, defines much of the island’s charcuterie.

Lamb and other small ruminants are the preferred meats in Libya, and chicken is what feeds people every day. Serving plenty of lamb signals status and generosity, a tradition tied to religious celebrations where animal sacrifice is important. Families historically saved all year to buy a sheep and used every part of it. They wasted hardly anything, which is also reflects in high popularity of offal dishes like osban and fasooliya bil kersha. 

As for the island on the Mediterranean Sea, the traditional cuisine must include seafood – and it does. Locals grill octopus, squid, sea bream, and red mullet, then finish them with lemon and sea salt. Grilling is common, though locals also prepare seafood soups and stews. Cypriot meze is often ocean-focused, offering fish roe salad, squid, and small fried fish.

Because much of Libya is desert and far from the sea, fresh fish never became a core staple. The Mediterranean off Libya yields relatively few large catches, limiting fish stocks near shore. During colonial times, Europeans brought in canned foods. After independence, urbanization and changing lifestyles made quick-prepared meals more common. Canned tuna rose in popularity — its long shelf life and convenience made it good for salads, sandwiches, pasta and stuffed vegetables.

Milk and dairy play an important role in Cypriot cooking. It’s striking that such a small island produced a cheese as widely known as halloumi. This semi-hard, unripened, brined cheese, from goat’s and sheep’s milk, has been part of local life for centuries.  Anari is another key cheese. Soft and similar to ricotta, it works in both savory and sweet dishes and is often served with honey. Yogurt is a staple, used in cooking and served alongside rich meats.

The use of dairy in cooking is typically simple: fermented laban (a drink similar to buttermilk), jben (a soft cheese), and rayeb (a homemade yogurt). Cheese is not a major staple, but is liked for salad and breakfast.

Olive oil is a primary source of fat for salads, grilled veggies, meats, and bread dippings. Some seed oils are also used, like sunflower oil, but to a lesser extent.

Many Cypriot desserts rely on semolina or flour, sugar or honey, almonds, walnuts, sometimes fruit, rose-water, or mastic. These give sweets a warm, aromatic,  nutty or floral flavour — not overly rich, but comforting. You’ll find desserts that are crunchy outside and soft inside, flaky and nutty, dense and chewy, or silky and light.

Food in Libya is prepared with olive oil; there is not even such a thought of having ‘too much olive oil’. Once in Libya, you would need to adjust your palette to sense local olive oil everywhere.