Beirutista

There’s a reason they call it “pub food.” It’s your mundane hash of chicken wings, fries, greasy nachos, cheese-flavored poppers, and maybe the odd quesadilla. Pubs aren’t known to entertain a mature menu worthy of a gourmet. Drinks are the real profit centers, with some quick, light snacks merely fuel to keep the drinking cycle in motion. That is definitely not the case at Secteur 75. The old house-turned-resto-pub sitting on a corner street along Rue d’Armenie in Mar Mikhael features very lavish chandeliers and gold-framed paintings to juxtapose paint-chipped walls. The graffiti art in one of the venue’s rooms teeters on avant garde, and the furniture varies markedly from table to table. But perhaps the real showpiece is not the captivating aesthetics of Secteur 75. It’s the food. We came in on Saturday afternoon close to 2pm for the weekly brunch. The regular dining menu—a nice, trim page fastened to a wooden clipboard—is also available, supplementing about a dozen brunch-y d...

Restaurants in Lebanon are guilty of many misdemeanors, and it’s time someone spoke up. These faux pas have tainted my dining experience on some level, and hard as I try to avoid them, I see them unfolding before me time and time again. How many of the below offenses have you been subject to? 1.        Uncorking a bottle of water at your table and charging you for it without your approval . I’d say fair and square 90% of eateries in Lebanon commit this act on a regular basis. I don’t mind the water if I’m not ordering a soft drink, juice, or other beverage, but dear waiter, just as your title dictates, WAIT for my cue! Often those restaurants excitedly popping off the tops of water bottles charge you exorbitantly for them. In Lebanese mezze venues, water bottles are typically already on the table and hence engraved on the tab even before you saunter in. 2.        Quite possibly more heinous than charging you for an...

Every so often a restaurant comes along that totally knocks you off your feet. I’m not referring merely to good food, but expectations far surpassed. You harbor little or no prospects, and then the restaurant not only pleases but surprises you with its flair. Yesterday was one such rare experience, at Olivos inside the Radisson Blu Martinez hotel in Ain Mreisseh. We arrived at 2.15pm on a Sunday afternoon to a spacious dining salon. The Mediterranean restaurant doubles as an atrium, with rays of sunshine streaking in to the center of the room, and dimmer, tucked-away seating on the fringe. We seated ourselves just as a shy waitress peeked out from the kitchen and hastened to our side. Moments later, a very friendly restaurant manager named Nabil made his way over, welcoming us to Olivos and promising a very pleasant lunch. While we pored over the menu—which features 9 appetizers, 8 mains, 6 pizzas, 4 pastas, and 4 desserts, followed by an Arabic mezze offering—t...

Studio 43 ushers in a whole new concept to Lebanese food lovers with its original mezza buffet. Picture this: a trolley of over two dozen cold mezza appetizers that you can gorge on to your heart’s content as many times as you please. We’re talking the entire rustic hodgepodge: hindbeh, mdardra, fattet batenjen, labneh bi zeitoun w jalapeno, karnabit mekleh, bulghur bi banadoura, ma7esheh 2ate3 (including eggplant, zucchini, and grape leaves), hummus, kibbet batata, kibbet la2tine, kibbe 2rass bi 7ar w labneh, and a whole lot more!   The restaurant is perched on high in the popular Cour Saint Michel, which is also home to Sud and Bar Tartine. Mount the Spanish-style stairs and turn either left or right to be greeted by comfortable open-air seating with a view of diners below. Inside, you can opt to sit strategically close to the mezza bar in the nonsmoking section, or on the opposite end, where you have the liberty to puff at an arguileh.  As soon as you even sit, ...

It’s difficult not to take advantage of the proximity of Beirut Souks’ Cinema City, which is just a few hundred meters from my office. As such, I’ve occasionally found myself making a beeline for the movies in the early evening right after work, rather than curse my fate behind the wheel at the treacherous peak hour traffic. Yesterday was one such night. Rather spontaneously, I popped into the cinema, scanned the list of available screenings and show times, saw Mark Wahlberg’s name in the list of actors for “Lone Survivor,” and quickly nabbed a ticket. Two minutes later, I was settled comfortably in a near-empty stadium that could easily host 300 viewers. A young adolescent couple in the nosebleed seats and a few middle-aged men in suits (also looking to dodge traffic?) were my movie companions. “Lone Survivor” tells the story of four Navy SEALs who, on June 28, 2005, were tasked with the mission of capturing or killing a Taliban ringleader and his minions in the mountains of Afg...

A few nights ago, we visited a restaurant we’d long been fixed on trying. L’Os (French for bone ), on the way up toward Ain Saadé and no more than a kilometer from my house, is a cozy yet spacious restaurant perched on a hill with a majestic roundabout for an entrance. Inside, you’re immediately greeted by an olive tree in the center of the restaurant and a lit chimney just steps from it. Tables line the perimeter of the restaurant, in the style of a diwan , and you feel as if you’re dining at a mountain lodge. We settled in and opened the menu to find a page (two in fact—one in French, the other in Arabic) recounting the history of L’Os with photos of the founding partners—a sweet albeit sappy ode to the restaurant’s roots. The food offerings span two pages: on the left, the French classics; on the right, Lebanese mezza. At the top of each page, in imposing print, L’Os’ “traditionnelle baguette à l’ail” (garlic bread) was highlighted, so we took the hint and ordered one with cori...

Entrepreneurship has been on the rise in Lebanon, and nowhere is it more vividly portrayed than in the upsurge of restaurants. It seems that everyone who has some extra funds at his disposal wants to open a dining venue with dreams of raking in the big bucks. But truth be told, managing a restaurant is anything but easy. From the creation of a brand and brand identity; the design of an appealing menu with palatable food; the commissioning of a reliable chef; the assurance of excellent service; the establishment and upkeep of an attractive venue that is readily accessible and offers decent parking. All of these elements combine to form a winning recipe in the restaurant business, to which very few restaurateurs in Lebanon can attest. I had the chance to check out the new food venture Captain Cook, situated downtown across from the Saray and hidden behind coiled metal barriers. The joint focuses on delivery, as its sit-in space is no more than 20 square meters (the kitchen is below...

Yesterday the renowned Lebanese newspaper Annahar published a half-page feature on Beirutista. It is divided into two parts: journalist Reine Bou Moussa’s article and an essay piece written by me in the spirit of my blog, entitled “Why We Come Back to Lebanon.” For those of you who cannot read Arabic, I’ll quickly summarize the article: my original aim with Beirutista was two-fold. First, it was a vehicle through which I could put pen to paper and give life to my thoughts as a Lebanese-American recently taking up residence in Lebanon. Second, it was an efficient correspondence tool with my friends in the USA—where I was born and “nurtured,” as the author put it. The blog, an online diary of sorts, allowed me to convey or dish up life in Lebanon to those who had never before set foot on its soil—these readers could vicariously live through me. But one of Beirutista’s unintended consequences in fact was unearthing a myriad of readers who shared exactly in my experiences, from my for...

Remember the picture of the felled tree I posted just 12 days ago? When the tempest by the name of Alexa descended upon Lebanon, unleashing high-speed gusts that struck down trees like this one? Do you recognize the street in which this photo was snapped? How about the landmark behind it on the left?