World Kitchen goes to Beirut - Street Food

Slipping between freshly cleaned bedsheets, the smell of just-baked bread, warm underwear on a winter's day, bubblewrap.

It's the simple things in life that really make me smile and my love of food is no exception. Don't get me wrong, there's a time and a place for over-complicated, pretentious molecular gastronomy (snail porridge anyone ?) but frankly it usually involves someone else's expense account.

The best dishes I have ever eaten owe their taste less to complexity than to the perfect marriage of the most simple ingredients. Beans on toast, jelly with ice cream, bread & butter and of course mango with sticky rice. Dishes which are so simple that we are almost afraid to admit how much we like them for fear of being classed as unsophisticated. In essence they are life's guilty pleasures.

It is with this in mind that I turn to the final installment of World Kitchen in Beirut as I decided to explore the realm of 'post-club munchies'. We started our evening in a great little eatery in Gemmayze called Le Chef (presumably named after it's rather eccentric chef) before going in search of the fabled Beirut nightlife. Having arrived before the rooftop clubs opened for the summer we'd heard the Black Eyed Peas' DJ was playing at Whisky Mist, though possibly more exciting was that the club handed out snacks called manakish at closing time (see video for details!).

And then to perhaps the culinary climax of my trip as we exited the club to explore the very home of the dishes I mercilessly devour after a night out in London. Every country has it's own answer to an evening's excesses however I find it difficult to believe anything could match the restorative power of chicken, fries, garlic sauce and chilies wrapped in warm, fresh pita. Satisfied that for once in my life I could justify a post-club shawarma not merely on the basis of total intoxication but in the name of food journalism I ate two to be sure.

And where, you ask, did I pick up this little morsel of heaven ? Well that's were the controversy begins. As FHM in it's yearly poll of the World's Most Beautiful Women always chooses a highly controversial number 1 to get people talking, so did I choose a restaurant that is bound to divide ASW opinion. Wherever the debate may take us though, the quasi-erogenous gastronomic euphoria I experienced that night far outweighed the offerings of London's Edgware Road. Like I say, it's the simple things...

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• street
• food
• kitchen
• cooking

[patrickdrake]

Good point John ! I'll work out some recipes and start putting them up :-)

[MrAlihiba]

can i have a bite plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz lol yummyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[MrAlihiba]

BAR BARRRRR LOVE ITT their shawerma in barbar the besttttttttttt

[virtualzhbl]

I was in Beirut a month ago and ate at Le Chef. The food their is excellent.

[dondonmofo99]

Wow cool! When I used to live in London in the 90s I used to frequent the marosh all the time!

[john7137]

You need to post instructions for how to make some of these beautiful foods!