Best In Beirut

Beirut brims with raw energy and a brand of hospitality that’s entirely its own. In her hometown, Jade George takes a seat at the eateries where tradition, creativity and the city’s best falafel are on full display

- Jade George

There’s nothing orderly about Beirut. The traffic is chaotic, the music loud, the architecture piecemeal, bearing the decorative flourishes of 23 years of French rule – then the wounds of 15 years of civil war and, more recently, the growing pains of breakneck development.

This beachside city is my hometown. It’s also the capital of a country of 6 million people, nearly a quarter of whom are refugees and migrant workers. Despite the occasional difficulties of living here – against a backdrop of explosive regional geopolitics and entrenched domestic political divisions – so many of us Beirutis couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s where I started an ‘ideas factory’, Art And Then Some, working on cultural projects across the Middle East and publishing a biannual food-culture journal called The Carton.

In Beirut, your next-door neighbor might spend an inordinate amount of time prying into your personal business, yet never fails to send you a box of apples from her family’s orchard at the start of each harvest. A cabbie will throw the book at you if your car breaks down and blocks his way, and another will stop his day’s service to help you fix it. It’s a city of raw energy, where old-fashioned hospitality is deeply ingrained, where creativity in the arts, research, and music thrives. And where all debates are conducted over shared plates of raw fava beans, mixed nuts, and arak.

Here’s a handful of my favorite places to visit in Beirut, where Lebanon’s food traditions and the capital’s special brand of hospitality are a way of life.

BARON

I met Athanasios Kargatzidis, known to all as Tommy, a decade ago. The Greek-born chef had moved temporarily – or so he thought – from a job in China to work for a restaurant group in Beirut. But then he married a Lebanese and stayed.