The Wine and Food of Lebanon
by Hans Zbinden
© April 2002
| I once met somebody who said that they only vacationed in countries that produced wine because it almost guaranteed that good food was available there too. While I understood the logic behind the statement, I thought that he was missing out on a lot of places, most notably Asia in almost its entirety. The country I holidayed in last month does make wine and has been doing so for over 4,000 years. And in accordance with the above wisdom, the variety and quality of the food was most excellent.
| I've for some time been thinking about a trip to the Middle East and actually had planned to visit Syria and Jordan this spring. The recent world events and only a week's time due to an unexpected change of employment made me delay these plans to the future. Still, I felt like going somewhere "different" which didn't involve an all too long flight.
An added twist to our trip was that during the time we were in Beirut, the League of Arab Nations were holding there annual conference in the city's newly rebuilt Intercontinental-Phoenician hotel. 15,000 heavily armed soldiers were guarding the downtown area for three days and the mood was slightly nervous. I got accosted by two plain-clothes members of the Lebanese special forces for taking pictures of the Intercontinental - they were exceedingly polite though - and it was quite a bizarre experience sitting outside a French bistro, munching foie gras and having machine gun toting soldiers standing ten yards from our table. 
Building sites throughout the city. Now, on to the epicurean delights!
| One thing that becomes apparent very quickly is that the Lebanese people are incredibly hospitable. In the hotels, people are constantly offering one food or drink, a locally brewed Almaza at a café is always accompanied with bowls of Lebanese nuts, carrot sticks or other snacks and we even had a taxi driver stop at the road and get us locally grown strawberries he wanted us to try. A staple of Lebanese cuisine are the mezze, appetizers served in small portions and in huge variations. Typical dishes include "hommos", a paste of pureed chick peas and olive oil which is dipped up with thin, absolutely wonderful Lebanese bread (top picture), Kabis (pickled vegetables and olives, also shown in the top picture), marinated cheeses, spicy little sausages, lentils, meat or cheese-filled pastries, bean salad, grilled eggplant … the list is endless. The choice of main dishes - if one actually can manage after the mezze - is just as varied, many include grilled meat on a skewer. 
This is what you get when you order a plate of grilled chicken at one of the many BBQ places throughout the city: salad, a plate with vegetables, pickles and olives, different breads, a creamy garlic dip and always some nuts or seeds. One item I become completely addicted to is what could be called Lebanese fast-food, the shawarma sandwich, available almost at every street corner. It's seasoned meat cut very thinly from a huge skewer that's topped off with pickles and a creamy, mayonnaise-like sauce and rolled into thin Lebanese bread. I've had similar sandwiches before many times - they're available in Berlin at almost every street corner too - but the difference in taste is a big as between a pizza baked in Napoli and one from a pizzeria in Helsinki. As the Guide Michelin states for its three star restaurants: A meal which merits the trip! As good food is such a big part of the Lebanese culture, it's not surprising that restaurants offering other types of cuisines can be found in abundance as well. In the seven days we were in Lebanon, we also had excellent Italian, Japanese (delicious jumbo shrimp tempura and sushi), French and Thai! 
McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, it's all there too!
| All the Lebanese wines I tried were big spice bombs, with Syrah not surprisingly being one of the most common varietals for the reds. I'm convinced ei8htohms would love them. The two whites I had were also quite unique and rich - somewhere between an oaked Sauvignon Blanc and a Sauternes without the sweetness - and were splendid with the foie gras and bresaula I was eating. The only Lebanese wine I'm aware of that's available in Switzerland is Chateau Musar, a winery that did everything to brave the war, had its share of crops blown to pieces but still managed to bring their wines to the international market. Another large winery is Chateau Kefraya. I bought a bottle of their top-of-the-line "Comte de M. 1998" (about 25 USD), a Cabernet/Syrah blend which is aged in new French oak barrels for 12 months. The clerk at the wineshop "Enoteca" in Beirut I bought it from cautioned me to either cellar it for another few years or to open and decant it at least 6 hours before drinking. I have no doubt that I will have the pleasure to drink a very full-tasting wine in a few years. Robert Parker gave the 1996 vintage 91/100 points, which is a good clue on how serious they are about making wine there. 
| The second bottle I brought back home is from the new Massaya winery which is a collaboration between Lebanese winemakers the French proprietor of Chateau Angelus, the former proprietor of Chateau Cheval Blanc and the proprietor at Le Vieux Telegraph. A roster that sounds most promising. I'll be opening it for Sunday dinner and will share my impressions next week. 
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| I'm not one who likes to experience the culture of a country through its hotels (there are exceptions to this rule of course). I'll eat any kind of strange food and won't shy away from weird situations but at the end of the day I want to be able to retire to a comfortable hotel with a hot shower, mini-bar and clean sheets. As I get antsy after spending more than three nights at the same hotel, I booked at three different places for the seven nights. Making online reservations was problem free although I can imagine better rates would have been possible during the off-season in which we were there. The first place we stayed was the Commodore Hotel, a rather musty Meridien which came to fame during the war as it was the preferred hang-out of the foreign correspondents. It was billed as a 5-star but realistically only passed as a three and a half. It was perfectly fine though, clean, safe, in a central location and with very fair rates. We then moved on to the Coral Beach Sheraton located at the beach in Jnah, just outside of Beirut. Now this is a nice hotel, with very attractively furnished, large suites, an excellent restaurant and extremely friendly and helpful staff. 
No travel report without a sunset, view from the Coral Beach's terrace. The last two nights, we stayed at the Albergo Hotel which is located in the old part of Beirut. The hotel is a member of Relais & Chateux, it's a beautiful old townhouse with only 33 rooms which are each decorated individually. It's a bit expensive but certainly the city's nicest and most unique hotel and I'm glad we treated ourselves to it. 
Lebanese hospitality at the Albergo Hotel.
| Although I immensely enjoyed my stay in Lebanon, I wish we had had a bit more time to plan it. There are lots of worthy sights to visit and most are easily reachable as the country is quite small. Wineries, Roman ruins, harbor towns, beaches and even ski resorts are close by but tourism isn't quite as developed yet that one could just hop into a travel agent and book a tour for the next day. We did hire a driver and visited a number of landmarks in the South. Here a few impressions of this beautiful region were all the country's fruit are grown: 
| We felt very safe during our stay, whether it was in Beirut at night or somewhere in the mountains of the South. The Lebanese people are all most polite, helpful and educated - most speak two or three languages - so traveling within this country is very hassle free. Prices for almost everything were higher than we had anticipated though but we always felt we had received fair value. RegardsHans ThePuristS Wine & Food discussion board
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Copyright April 2002 - Hans Zbinden and ThePuristS.com - all rights reserved
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Before the devastating civil war that lasted 15 years and ended in 1990, Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East, with flower-lined boulevards, excellent hotels and restaurants and a legendary nightlife that was without peer in the region. Large parts of the city were destroyed in the war and the scars are still very much visible. A huge effort is being made to rebuild the city to its former glory, the results are already very apparent in the rebuilt downtown area.