| Tawlet Kamal Mouzawak is Lebanon’s answer to Alice Waters. He’s hosted a macrobiotic TV show, taught local schoolchildren about organic food and spent two years touring his homeland learning about the country’s culinary traditions. In 2004 he started Souk el-Tayeb, the city’s farmers’ market. More recently he opened the popular Tawlet (‘‘table’’ in Arabic), a canteen where regional cooks prepare daily meals. Book ahead. Naher Street, 12 011-961-1-448-129 tawlet.com Photo by Sean Hemmerle |
Though it was once known as the Paris of the Middle East, ‘‘Beirut never truly lost its sheen,’’ says Gordon Campbell Gray, the British hotelier who finally opened Le Gray last November, having forged ahead even through the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. The Lebanese capital surely has a touch of Parisian glamour, but it also has a dash of Berlin (bullet-pocked buildings after a civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990) and Miami (flashy night-life zones choked with Ferraris and S.U.V.’s). There’s a burgeoning gallery scene, world-class shopping — from avant-garde boutiques like IF to big-ticket designers like Marc Jacobs and Dior — and five-star hotels like the new Four Seasons and Le Gray. ‘‘The Lebanese have a spirit for living for the day, and it permeates every aspect of their life,’’ Campbell Gray says. ‘‘You really understand this when you head back to a Western city.’’
| B018 The provocative, Harvard-trained architect Bernard Khoury designed this nightclub back in 1998, but it’s still the city’s favorite after-hours spot. Built on the site of a former refugee camp where many were killed during the civil war, the club is a continual source of controversy as well as an example of Koury’s brutalist architecture style, with its location in an underground parking lot and its steel retractable roof. Lot 317, Karantina 011-961-3-800-018 Photo by Sean Hemmerle |
