Beirut’s Beit Kanz brings together community, culture and cuisine in Lebanon’s capital

From restoring homes and providing jobs to serving affordable fine-dining, this cultural hub is hard at work

Beit Kanz is the culmination of NGO Beit El Baraka’s work to restore dignity to the many Lebanese citizens living in poverty. Photo: Beit El Baraka

Lebanon’s capital of Beirut remains well known for its heritage houses, and its fantastic dining scene. Yet, rather than catering to the wealthy elite and foreign tourists, one venue on Sursock Street has turned this image on its head, while also supporting those hit hardest by an all-consuming national crisis.

Housed in a restored heritage home, Beit Kanz is the culmination of NGO Beit El Baraka’s work to restore dignity to the many Lebanese citizens now living in poverty.

Built through charitable and in-kind donations, the restaurant and artisanal boutique serves as the nexus of a broad and far-reaching project to provide stable, reliable work for as many people as possible, while also promoting and safeguarding the country's cultural heritage.

“We decided that it was time to do something that impacted Lebanese society and created jobs,” Beit El Baraka and Beit Kanz founder Maya Ibrahimchah told The National. “But how do you create jobs? You have to create jobs that are in need and you need to understand your market.”

“We are the most fertile country in the entirety of the Middle East and North Africa,” she said. “Up until 1975, we were able to export the large majority of our production, so what happened? We're a country that's importing all its food; we have food insecurity, so it was the perfect segment [for us].”

Founded in 2019, Beit El Baraka was originally created as an initiative to help preserve the dignity of Lebanese citizens – particularly the elderly – struggling with the increasing cost of living. The NGO started out as a small supermarket where people could register for a points card that helped them to save money on groceries.

Addressing an underlying problem

The volume of applicants quickly revealed a much larger underlying problem within Lebanese society. As the nation's economic crisis deepened, suppliers were increasingly unable to buy products from overseas, as the collapse of the Lebanese pound drove import prices higher and higher, pricing out ordinary consumers.

“The numbers started growing, although the country was still a kind of a fantasy land where people were out all night, having fun and enjoying dinners and parties,” said Ibrahimchah. “Ninety per cent of the population was suffering miserably, and nobody cared.”

“Beit El Baraka had to adapt immediately, and this is when we moved from an NGO to an emergency relief centre,” she continued. “The number of families that we have helped is now 226,000 people, [around five] per cent of the Lebanese population.”

In 2020, the Beirut Port explosion exacerbated the country's existing problems. In addition to all those killed and injured, around 300,000 people were displaced after their homes were destroyed by the blast. While the government stumbled to respond, NGOs were left to plug the gaps.

Beit El Baraka quickly assembled a team of 372 builders and tradespeople that took on the restoration of over 3,000 apartments, along with the premises of nearly 700 small businesses, seven schools and 21 heritage buildings, including the property that would eventually host Beit Kanz. All of this was achievedwithin 18 months.

“A friend called me and said: 'I know that you've got funds for heritage, and I know of this building you have to come and see',” said Ibrahimchah.

“I used to volunteer with the Ministry of Culture, so I'm one of the people who fought a lot to have this building listed. We didn't want to just repair the building and leave. We said: 'Let's repair the building and put it at the service of the community'.”

A costly reconstruction

Through a barter deal with the building’s owners, Beit Kanz was allocated the ground floor for five years – following the building’s $152,000 refurbishment – to use as a venue for their new artisanal boutique and restaurant, free of charge.

For architect Elie Arab, head of Beit El Baraka’s reconstruction department, the half-demolished heritage home presented a number of challenges that had to be overcome.

“Everything was broken,” recalled Arab. “The ceiling was cracked, and the main beams. We started from above and went down. We [secured] the main structure, and then we waterproofed the roof. We closed everything from the outside and started working inside. We painted and repaired everything as it was. It's not very difficult [but] it's costly.”

“We had a problem with finding good lye for the plaster, because the old technique has been forgotten and now they use very commercial stuff that wouldn't work,” he explained. “We had to introduce new parts made from the same wood, which is cedar, so the wood we used comes from commercial forests in Turkey.”

Now beautifully restored, Beit Kanz’s restaurant offers a delicious menu of traditional, but affordable, Lebanese dishes. Many ingredients come from Beit El Baraka’s own farms, which were opened up to local agricultural workers struggling to continue their own operations amid soaring operations costs and limited government support.

Going back to their roots

“We started planting because we needed to feed 50,000 people,” said Ibrahimchah. “The lands we have now represent almost 500,000 square metres. Today, we produce 21 tonnes of fruits and vegetables per season. We produce 200kg of dairy products every single day. It’s all organic.”

“The restaurant is doing great because people are going back to the roots,” she explained. “They understand the importance of everything being locally sourced. All the food that stays on the plate is not thrown away; it's sent to our land, where it is used as compost. It's a full circular economy within Beit Kanz.”

The restaurant also employs over 1,000 women in more than 50 rural villages, producing Beit Kanz’s moune – traditional Lebanese preserves that have seen a surge in popularity as it has become increasingly difficult to maintain fridges and freezers in the face of frequent electrical blackouts.

At the same time, the kitchen team consists of young hospitality and catering students, many of whom would otherwise have left Lebanon in search of better prospects abroad, reflecting a broader “brain drain” trend.

This mindset also applies to the boutique side of Beit Kanz. Historically, Lebanese crafts are well known across the Arab world and beyond. These include wood carving, metalwork and blown glass, all produced using ancestral techniques invented by the Phoenicians.

In recent years, these skills are becoming increasingly rare, but Beit Kanz offers established and new craftspeople an opportunity to revive these vanishing arts, while also providing them with steady, sustainable employment.

“When you talk to young [people about learning these skills], they will tell you: No, we don't want that because we can't make money,” lamented Ibrahimchah. “We don't want to lose these talents. We told them: If you stay in Lebanon, we'll give you a job, and we'll do it together.”

With further plans to develop a programme of social events, Beit Kanz is now positioning itself as a hub for both small businesses and accessible fine-dining, a concept that Beirut has rarely seen.