February 5, 2008 4:32

Food in the Levant: Still Missing Something

Naranj, a new restaurant in the old city of Damascus. / Photo by Manaf Hassan

There's a saying in the Middle East that the best food is always found at home. Unfortunately, that doesn't help those of us whose mothers live over 2,000 miles away. Restaurants in the Levant often display little of this region's varied culinary heritage. In Lebanon, the big restauranteurs put their money into showy architecture and "concept" restaurants that serve foreign cuisines like sushi, Argentine steaks, and gasp, buffalo wings. In Syria, huge banquet halls have opened in the old city of Damascus, turning lovely courtyard homes into Oriental food factories producing a numbing formula of mezze salads and mixed grill without innovation and with indifference.

There are exceptions, usually small lunch places that serve the kind of thing your momma would make if she were Lebanese: dumplings cooked in yogurt, curries and spicy stews that hint of the trade routes of yore. Modernized Middle Eastern cuisine is harder to find. One Beirut restaurant, Bread, serves a pan Mediterranean fusion, but uses only local ingredients, (a kind of Lebanese Chez Panisse) so that even its Italianate and Frenchy dishes taste indigenous. The other night I had Toulouse sausages cooked with chestnuts and frikeh (roasted green wheat) -- a perfect winter meal.

But hands down the most impressive new restaurant in the region opened late last year in Damascus, on Straight Street, at the meeting point of the Christian, Muslim and Armenian quarters in the old city. The owners of Naranj, as it's called, departed from the usual oppressive formula in a number of heartening ways. The huge plasma televisions that blare music videos throughout meals are gone. Staff are attentive and friendly, thanks to a company policy that pays a living wage and encourages promotion from within the ranks. (The drinks manager used to mop the floors.) But most importantly, the restaurant owners fanned out to villages all over the country where they collected and updated recipes that you won't see in any other restaurant in town. A dip of pureed beets made a welcome break from the ubiquity of humous, and though I usually don't eat fish east of the Bekaa valley (having had some bad experiences with masgouf in Iraq) the fish and seasoned rice dish here called Sayadeyeh was light and savory. Burgil and chick pea pilaf (with or without a lamb shank sticking out) is another specialty, and even though its an old Armenian standby, the kebab with cherries here just tasted different. Sadly, the deserts are uninspiring, but perhaps this is subjective: over four years in the Middle East and and I still can't get excited about pastries with varying degrees of similarity to baklava.

I wish I could say that Naranj and its approach to Syrian cuisine is part of wider cultural trend, but reforms in Syria have by and large come to a grinding halt. Business is still booming, at least for a certain segment of the Syrian upper classes, but that's in large part because of external investment from Gulf countries that have more oil money than they know how to spend. And though Syria is celebrating its designation by UNESCO as Arab capital of culture for 2008, this is really a non-event. The buzz so far has been about a big fireworks display and a lip-syncing Lebanese diva. In Lebanon itself, the movement to create a innovative restaurant scene has suffered -- like so many other things -- from the war with Israel in 2006, the current political crisis and terror campaign that have driven talented young Lebanese overseas. (The restaurant Bread -- located in a safe neighborhood -- stayed afloat during the war thanks in part to foreign journalists with few other places to eat.) Without peace and sustainable freedom, every aspect of life in the region -- from food to politics -- is always going to be half-baked.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut