Lebanese food is one of the most widely exported cuisines on earth and one of the most poorly represented abroad. Almost everything you have eaten under that name outside Lebanon is a thinner version of what is served here.
The two formats
Almost all eating in Beirut falls into one of two shapes.
Mezze — a large number of small shared plates over several hours, with arak. This is the meal, and it is the thing to organise your trip around. Do not order a main course.
The furn — the bakery. Manousheh with zaatar, straight out of the oven, before nine in the morning, eaten standing on the pavement for almost nothing.
Between those two you have most of Lebanese eating.
Things to get right
Tabbouleh is a parsley salad, not a grain salad. Overwhelmingly parsley, chopped fine, with a handful of bulgur. If it arrives the other way round you are in the wrong place.
Hummus is served warm, smooth, with a pool of olive oil, and heavily tahini-forward. Cold hummus out of a fridge is a foreign invention.
Kibbeh nayyeh — raw lamb or beef pounded with bulgur — is the great Sunday dish. If you eat raw meat anywhere, eat it here, where the butchery for it is a specialism.
Toum — whipped garlic emulsion, no dairy, no egg — is what makes Lebanese chicken shawarma what it is.
Fatteh — chickpeas, yoghurt, toasted bread, pine nuts, browned butter — is the breakfast dish that visitors most often miss.
Knafeh — semolina and cheese pastry in syrup — is eaten for breakfast, in a sesame bread roll, and it is correct.
Beyond Lebanese
Beirut has always eaten broadly.
Armenian, in Bourj Hammoud — basturma, soujouk, mante, lahmajun — brought by survivors of the 1915 genocide and now entirely part of the city’s food.
Palestinian, particularly musakhan and the sumac-heavy cooking of the north.
Syrian, which has become far more visible since 2011 and includes some of the best cheap food in the city.
Armenian and Syrian bakeries are the ones to seek out.
French, from the mandate period, still visible in the pastry shops and in a certain kind of Achrafieh restaurant.
Drinking
Arak with mezze — arak first, then water, then ice, in that order, and the order matters to everyone at the table.
Lebanese wine is genuinely good and under-exported. The Bekaa Valley has been producing since Phoenician times. Château Musar is the famous one — a wine that was made and shipped through the civil war, missing only two vintages — and Ksara, Kefraya, Massaya and Ixsir are all worth ordering.
Coffee — Arabic coffee, cardamom-scented, served in small cups, sada (unsweetened), wasat (medium) or hilweh (sweet). Specify or you will get sweet.
Jallab, ayran, fresh jus — pomegranate, orange, carrot — from juice stands.
Where
Mar Mikhael and Gemmayzeh — the largest concentration of good modern restaurants and bars.
Badaro — a genuine neighbourhood food street, less expensive, good.
Hamra — older, cheaper, students, and the best late-night options.
Bourj Hammoud — Armenian, and the best food shopping in Lebanon.
Zaitunay Bay and downtown — the expensive end, and mostly not the interesting one.
The mountains — a mezze house in Broummana, Beit Mery or the Chouf on a Sunday afternoon is the version of this that Lebanese people would actually recommend.
Tawlet in Mar Mikhael, where a different cook from a different village runs the kitchen each day.
Hospitality
This needs saying because visitors are unprepared for it.
You will be fed. If you fall into conversation with someone, you may be invited to eat, and the invitation is not a formality. Refusing food is genuinely difficult and mildly offensive.
You will not be allowed to pay in a social setting, and arguing about the bill is a ritual with rules. Offer twice, lose gracefully, and reciprocate later.
Take something if you are invited to a house — sweets from a good patisserie are the standard.
This is not performance. It is a country in the sixth year of an economic collapse where people will still insist on feeding a stranger, and it is worth accepting with some grace.
Practical
Tipping matters more than usual. Around ten per cent, in cash, on top of any service charge — wages have collapsed and the service charge often does not reach the staff.
Book at the good restaurants, particularly Thursday to Saturday.
Kitchens serve late, and Beirut eats late.
Vegetarians do extremely well — a mezze table is mostly vegetables — and should watch for meat in things that look vegetable.
Ramadan changes the rhythm: quiet days, and iftar spreads after sunset that are among the best meals of the year.