G3 HK sandwich, anyone? How about a serving of Zigzawer salad? Luke Jerod Kummer relishes the gallows humour at an explosive new restaurant.
When my taxi crosses into the Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburb and Hizbollah's stronghold, I am greeted by a succession of high-flying banners bearing the faces of dead fighters from "the resistance", some so young their beards look painted on. Piles of rubble left over from Israel's 2006 air strikes lie next to rows of new and partially built apartment buildings that Hizbollah began throwing up just days after the shelling stopped. Everywhere, teams of workers toil under cranes.
After passing Al Manar, the Hizbollah-run TV station, and turning onto a side street with a mosque and several small shops, my driver parks in front of a wall of sandbags. Beneath a camouflage-painted awning, at what looks like a military checkpoint, a sign pictures a big, juicy hamburger beside a .357 Magnum. "A sandwich can kill you," reads the ad's slogan. Inside Buns and Guns, the war-themed eatery that opened in Dahiyeh about two months ago, fake rifles are mounted on the walls, and a pile of real artillery shells is heaped just inside the door. As I enter, the line cooks are standing behind the grill wearing fatigues, waiting for the electricity to return after a blackout so they can switch on a fan.
A boy in baggy skater jeans and a woodland camouflage T-shirt hands me a menu shaped like a bullet and adorned with a picture of a M-16 carbine. Its offerings range from the RPG sandwich to the Claymore landmine pizza. I bunker down at a table behind the sandbag barrier. The menu is less than helpful; it has lots of photographs of guns, planes and tanks, but no pictures of the sandwiches, pizzas and salads the restaurant actually serves. As I sit puzzling over what a G3 HK sandwich or Zigzawer salad might be, I hear car horns, call-and-response chants and a fiery, megaphone-amplified speech. Hizbollah's most recent prisoner exchange with Israel happened just two days ago, and a rally is starting nearby.
I end up ordering a prix-fixe "Terrorist Meal". Just as I'm about to dig in, Ali Hamoud, the restaurant's hefty co-owner and chef, plops himself down at my table wearing dark sunglasses that contrast with his round, boyish face. He eyes the artery-clogging RPG sandwich - grilled shish tawook on "Lebanese resistance bread" - in front of me. "See," he says, "now you understand how a sandwich can kill you."
Hamoud talks passionately about food - especially about the alchemic ability of Lebanese chefs to meld oriental and continental cuisine - and becomes gleefully mischievous while elaborating on his restaurant's gallows humour. I ask him about the "nuclear sauce" that came with my sandwich. "Oh, it's top secret," he replies. "It looks like light ranch or something like that, but it's not." As for the other red goop on my plate: "This is barbecue sauce, a regular one, but I mix it with honey and a little bit of Tabasco and call it 'suicide sauce'." Elsewhere on the menu, salads are "camouflages" ("Yeah, yeah, it's already green"). The B52 is a beef sandwich (hence the B) whose proportions recall the 160,000kg Stratofortress bomber itself.
Hamoud, who was in the Lebanese military back when service was obligatory, recalls how hard it was for his staff to learn to match the menu's munitions with the restaurant's meals. "I struggled too much teaching them names and how to understand without the pictures." He seems to think this sort of thing should come easily to people who live in a conflict zone. "The submarines have [sub-shaped] French bread," he says, shaking his head. "I name the items with the oriental bread after the Russian weapons."
Hamoud also laments that he didn't have more money to open with. He wanted to make the restaurant even more battle-ready, and to install metal detectors. Recently, he contacted a local bakery about making bullet-shaped loaves, but the cost was too high. So far business has been good, in part because the restaurant has received so much free press. Even Al Manar did a profile, and people around the world have seen the restaurant on YouTube. Thanks to the publicity, Hamoud is hoping to open a second location in a more expensive - but more profitable - area, either Jounieh or West Beirut. When asked if he plans to serve alcohol in the new restaurant, he grins over the prospect of titling the cocktails. I remind him that there's already a drink called the B52. Hamoud knows; he used to work at a less provocatively-themed restaurant, Beirut's Hard Rock Cafe.
The new restaurant will also have a different name. Apparently "Buns and Guns" has already caused confusion. When his brother's wife, who lives in Boston, read about it she thought it sounded like a strip club. Locals have also misunderstood. Hamoud says they walk in, see the guns and say "What exactly are you selling here?" But in general people have been supportive. Early on, for example, Hamoud had trouble stacking the sandbags. "The first time I put, then it fell," he says. Then people from the street started offering advice: "No, no, don't put it like this … don't make it like that ... like this."
The idea for Buns and Guns has occupied Hamoud for over two years. He worked for a while in Saudi Arabia, saving money to make his dream come true. The restaurant was supposed to open earlier, but clashes between Hizbollah and rival militant groups put everything on hold. "It was a big problem," he recalls. "For sure, I was worried. The sense of humour leaves. Everyone is down. Everyone's afraid ... Even if I have sandbags," he laughs. "But it helped me because I collected many shells," he says, motioning to the small arsenal by the door.
The restaurant is starting to fill up with people coming back from the rally. Parents are arriving with their kids. A group of young men invites me to join their table. They explain that they live in Dahiyeh but commute to the American University in Beirut, which is located in a posher part of town overlooking the Corniche. They are struggling to figure out the menu. "We are going to look at the guns and see what looks good. Maybe the Kalashnikov," says a young man named Hassan. They giggle over the nuclear sauce. I ask about an entry I've never heard of: the Kornet. Mohammed Joud fills me in: "It's a new weapon that was used for the first time in 2006. It's a rocket. It destroyed many Merkavas [Israeli tanks]."
I inquire about the P-90, another item I'm not familiar with. They explain that it's a dish of potato wedges - named after a Belgian submachine gun. Mohammed Hussein senses that I am taking note of his friends' knowledge of different arms. "Most of the people here have heard about these guns from Hizbollah and the war ... and also Counter-Strike," he explains. (Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter video game, immensely popular around the world, in which players chose either the roles of terrorists or counter-terrorist forces.)
I wonder aloud whether it's strange for a restaurant like Buns and Guns to open in a war-torn neighbourhood. "No, it's the other way around," insists Hassan. "Because it's in Dahiyeh it will look like it's familiar." "You get used to a neighbourhood," notes Uddeh. "And then one day you wake up and some buildings are missing. It's disorienting." After the air strikes, he found himself lost two blocks from home.
Hassan shrugs. "Some people might say that it's too violent or too military. But everything is nowadays. I mean you have paintball games and video games. Why not this?"
