T
here’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 in a country of six million, 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
calledThe Carton.
In Beirut, your next-door neighbour 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 arts, research, music – thrives. And
where all debates are conducted over share plates
of raw fava beans, mixed nuts and, of course, arak.
Here’s a handful of my favourite places, where
Lebanon’s food traditions and the capital’s special
brand of hospitality are a way of life.➤