Joel Hart

Lebanese food has been available in London for roughly a half century, with Fakhreldine opening in Mayfair in the 1970s and the first branch of Maroush on Edgware Road in 1981. While there is still plenty of decent Lebanese fare on Edgware Road, it is further west in Park Royal, that some of the best Lebanese – and Middle Eastern food in general – can now be found. But what is Lebanese cuisine anyway? And what makes it distinct from Syrian or Palestinian food? In the late 1990s, when the Arab world’s first TV chef Ramzi Choueiri began chronicling rural culinary traditions across Lebanon, a more coherent nationalist idea of the cuisine emerged, while the urban restaurant culture of Beirut was exported across global cities with an idea of Lebanese cuisine as a uniquely elegant take on Middle Eastern cuisine. While this image of Lebanese food has stuck, it is at its core characterised by the Arabic saying baynatna khubz wa-milih (between us there is bread and salt). In other words, it is food to be eaten communally; dishes to be shared. The interesting thing about Lebanese restaurants in London is that the differences between menus can be so subtle they’re hard to notice. Menus are often organised the same way: cold mezze, hot mezze, and then mains, often organized into stewed dishes and charcoal grill items. So the differences can be put down to three things. First, service style. At the more upmarket end of the spectrum, home-baked pita or taboun bread are served over industr