“Did you know there’s a Lebanese restaurant in Brighton?” my wife asked looking up from her computer. “Don’t tell me,” I yelled back. “I bet it’s called Baalbek or Byblos.” Victory gleamed in her eyes. “Nope. Al Raouche”
I reckon I’d have got there in the end. Raouche is, after all, the seafront district in West Beirut popular with tourists and site of the Pigeon Rock, a landmark that must surely have lent its name to dozens of Lebanese restaurants across the globe.
Lebanese food is big business these days, especially in London, and in particular SW3, where the free-spending Arab community loves to hang out in opulent, full-on Lebanese restaurants like Noura, Yamal Al Sham and Ishbilia.
But Lebanese foodie culture has also been able to reach a more mainstream customer base in the UK’s whopping £60 billion (Dh365.34bn) restaurant industry. In an age of healthy eating and unparalleled curiosity for ethnic food, the Lebanese kitchen, with its dizzying array of mezze, ticks all the boxes.
In recent years, this popularity has been driven by the hugely successful Compote Libanais chain, owned by the dynamic, multi-marathon-running Algerian entrepreneur Tony Kitous and styled by the Lebanese designer Rana Salam. It has injected a sexy retro kitsch to what was in danger of becoming a very tired cliché.
Gone are the days when a Lebanese restaurant could get by on the food alone. The modern diner wants to eat in surroundings that reflects the lifestyle zeitgeist of which food is an integral part. Faded pictures of Lebanon’s heyday, beaded curtains and plastic grapes will no longer cut it with the Britain’s new-found gastronomic discernment.
Comptoir Libanais is young and cheerful and conjures up the Arab world as we all would like to imagine it: a welcoming, exotic and sensual “place”, filled with magical ingredients and heady aromas, tinged with a hint of mystery. The brand is a powerful ambassador for a region in dire need of some good press.
Brighton, where I live for part of the year, has also picked itself up by its bootstraps. It used to be a bit down at heel, even seedy in some places; a seasonal holiday destination and a retirement town for maiden aunts. But in the past decade it has carved out a reputation as deeply desirable place to live, especially since the introduction of a super speedy train from London made it commuter heaven, and this is reflected in the house prices. Would Al Raouche reflect this new affluent vibe? There was only one way to find out.
Preston Street wasn’t in what one might call the hippest part of town and had clearly seen better days, as had Al Raouche, which at 2pm on a Saturday was quite literally empty. If the peeling faux leather finish afflicting many of the chairs was a bad omen, quite what I was meant to make of the very loud argument over unpaid bills emanating from the back of the restaurant was anyone’s guess.
At that point we could have left, but I sensed a Rubicon of sorts had been crossed. In any case, I felt a stab of loyalty to my countrymen and, as my wife pointed out, many of the online reviews declared the food to be “delicious”, even if the place was described as cheap and cheerful. How bad could it be?
Pretty bad as it turned out. The waiter was not the cheery Lebanese expat from central casting, probably because he knew we had overheard the embarrassing altercation in the kitchen. Even learning we were Lebanese, not to mention his only customers, failed to lift the mood. Instead he simply plonked the laminated menus on the table and rushed back to what were clearly more pressing issues at the back.
The verdict: well I’m no food critic but the “delicious food” was barely edible; the one bathroom, which dated back to the ‘70s, and had just one toilet, was located at the top of a flight of rickety stairs and the service … well let’s just say we were served.
The coffee, however, was excellent and its arrival heralded an amorous young Spanish couple, who were clearly experiencing a surfeit of pheromones. The waiter, buoyed by the sudden surge in business, finally engaged us in conversation. Al Raouche, he told us, opened in 2011; there were “a few Lebanese families in the area” and business “picked up at night”.
That night I read that Lebanese expats sent US$7.2 billion in remittances in 2013, equivalent to 16 per cent of GDP. The country is the 12th-largest recipient of remittances among developing economies and the second largest in the Arab world.
Like I said, the coffee was excellent. Everything else can be fixed.
Michael Karam is a freelance writer based in Beirut and Brighton
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