11 déjà vus you get at a Lebanese restaurant

Our “2 or 3 kisses on the cheek” greeting follow us wherever we go, that is a given.

But it’s so awkward in a restaurant, where we all stand in a line, squeezed between two tables to go around kissing people who are late (there is always someone who’s late). Can’t we just sit and eat our food?

The older people (parents) usually order food for everyone, cold mezza, hot mezza, the works.

But then…a pregnant pause. “Tabbouleh aw fattoush?” It’s perhaps the closest thing to an existential crisis you will have experienced all day.

Without fail, they’ll get both tabbouleh and fattoush.

No, I don’t mean in sections like a normal restaurant.

There are the shisha and cigarette smokers, who sit on the edge of one table, and the non-smokers who sit on the other edge. It’s almost an unspoken rule that people of a different smoking status don’t sit together.

For all your snacking privileges, there’s something to snack on in front of you before the “real food” arrives.

There are usually plates of bizir (seeds), peanuts and a large tray of vegetables, among them mint leaves, lettuce, tomato and cucumbers. It’s also always arranged in a way that looks impressive, but if you touch anything it will all come toppling down. Why? I don’t know.

Every Middle Easterner knows about the plate pile up that happens at an Arab restaurant, let alone a Lebanese one. The food just keeps coming, and the plates pile up more elegantly than a house of cards. From hummus to makanek (sausages), everything your heart desires materializes in front of you in a matter of seconds.

Angels pass by your table so very often, giving good tidings of joy, or in this case, baskets of hot bread. It’s Arabic, saj, that awesome inflated one, all the types of bread you can sink your teeth into.

Amid all the hospitable smiles and charming dinner talk, a loud crash will emit from somewhere.

The whole restaurant is suddenly silent except for the sounds of metal and plates shattering. A few minutes will pass, people will crane their necks to see where the sound came from, and then everyone will start talking again. Good as new.

After all that food, there’s always a debate over having some kebabs or shish tawouk. There’s slight hesitation as everyone says they’re way too full for another bite. Then just a couple of seikhs are ordered anyway.

It’s impossible that after all this food, we would still want more right? Dessert is non-optional. Still, as the saying goes “fi batn il mokmen, fi zawye lal helo.” Translated the means “In the stomach of a righteous man remains a corner for sweets.”

So, out come the watermelon, the apples, the grapes, the ashta (cream) with honey and all the seasonal fruits.

After the dessert, you hear the familiar jingle of the coffee ‘amo with the tiny cups. Tiny cups = Turkish coffee, as if you could end the night any other way.

You go to, for example, an Italian restaurant, you maybe stay an hour, an hour and a half. You go to a Lebanese restaurant, you eat for an hour, you talk and shisha for 2 more hours, then spend 30 minutes saying goodbye.

We like to take our sweet time with everything.