BEIRUT: It’s only the first day of business, but by 2 p.m. Friday, the restaurant is packed full of diners who compete for elbow room as they eagerly ladle out helpings of some of Lebanon’s finest dishes. While many an office worker across Beirut chows down on a pizza or hamburger, those who are eating with such gusto at Tawlet Souk el-Tayeb savor dishes created closer to home, recipes mastered by generations past: raw spiced meat, hand-rolled maftoul (a couscous-like stew) with chick peas and chicken, muhammara chicken flavored with camouneh [mixed] spices, and crushed wheat mixed with yoghurt, just to name a few. 

Chef, writer and television personality Kamal Mouzawak established Souk el-Tayeb, Beirut’s first real farmers’ market, in 2004, offering a valuable platform for dozens of small-scale organic farmers, florists and other local producers to showcase their products to a wider audience. Twice a week, they gather in Beirut’s Saifi and Achrafieh neighborhoods to offer their goods: honeycomb, baked sweets, fruit and vegetables, home-cooked food, olive oil and mouneh- jars of preserved foods stored year-round in preparation for winter. 

The idea of the market, says Mouzawak, is to remind shoppers that other fellow human beings are behind the production of the food they eat. “If you cannot go to the land anymore, at least you can have a link to the producer … so people are not just buying lettuce, they are buying Abu Rabieh’s lettuce.” 

The emphasis on building relationships between producers and consumers, or co-producers, as Mouzawak calls them, seems to have worked. Suzanne Douaihy, from the northern town of Zghorta, says she has forged friendships with both her market colleagues and her customers: “I have people from Kuwait, Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia, who call me the minute they arrive at the airport to ask if I’ll be at the market and if I could cook special dishes for them.” 

It seems, then, an almost natural evolution for Souk el-Tayeb to expand from the market place to the kitchen table, or tawle. The restaurant, tucked away at the end of a sleepy dead-end road in Beirut’s Mar Mikhael neighborhood, brings in a different producer every day to cook their area’s local specialties with resident chef Assaad Sebaaly, giving diners an opportunity to reconnect with their country’s rich culinary heritage. 

“We didn’t even want to call it a restaurant, it’s just simply Tawlet, like at home,” says Christine Codsi, Mouzawak’s business partner. With over 70 different cooperatives and families selling their wares at Souk el-Tayeb, variation will surely be Tawlet’s signature dish. 

Once a month, Tawlet will also invite a special guest, like a food writer or macrobiotic chef, to cook up a storm. Cooking classes will run every Wednesday. Like the market, Tawlet is an exercise in preserving Lebanon’s culinary traditions, Mouzawak says. 

“Traditions are perpetuated through food, not things like music,” he argues. “When people travel, they take their own food with them.” 

Equally important, Lebanese cuisine is also an opportunity to unite people living in an otherwise divided country, he adds. “People along the coast, in the north, in the Chouf, or in the South eat the same food. The differences are regional, not confessional.” He points to maamoul, a cookie-like pastry stuffed with dates and nut paste, which is eaten by Christians at Easter and by Muslims at Eid. “In a country as divided as Lebanon, nothing can bring people together as much as the land and food,” Mouzawak says. 

Apart from celebrating a common culinary heritage, Tawlet also celebrates those cooks who might normally be brushed aside as “maids,” Mouzawak says. The “diva in residence” Friday is Mona al-Dorra, otherwise known as Umm Ali, from Majdelzoun in South Lebanon. 

Those who are tempted by the convenience of a take-away will be able to savor Lebanon’s traditional foods too: a delivery service is to be added soon.