During the final weeks of my junior year at Syracuse University, my cabinets remained embarrassingly bereft of anything resembling nutrition. A few boxes of penne, some six-month-old mixed nuts and half a bag of stale granola constituted my bland, poor-man’s diet. I became increasingly innovative, discovering spicy chili Ramen noodles with a cup of frozen corn resembled something delicious.

Sitting at a folding table on my porch, a box of day-old Domino’s pizza in front of me, I watched my Syrian landlord George tinker with our front door lock, a cigarette hanging from his wrinkled lips.

‘You’re going to Lebanon?’ he mumbled, ash blowing into the doorway. ‘Great food — don’t eat too much!’

His words could not have rung more meaningless as I stared at my pitiful meal du jour. Despite all my irrational fears — of flying, getting lost, captured, robbed, groped — dreams of a healthier diet became a pre-trip obsession. I was not disappointed.

Lebanon’s elite — and elite media — love to boast Lebanon as a rising international food capital. A quick search for travel articles on the country reveals Western media echo that sentiment.

A number of historical factors have led Lebanon to this prominence. First, its geographic location means it abounds in the natural ingredients — olive oil, citrus, seafood, varieties of fresh produce — that make most Mediterranean cuisine exquisite.

At the crossroads of cultures and borrowing influences from its neighbors, Lebanon does the best renditions of regional staples: hummus, foul (beans), pita, labneh (thick yogurt), falafel and kebbeh (deep-fried meatballs), or so the travel experts say. Many eateries in the United States touting Middle Eastern cuisine take their recipes from the Lebanese — like Munjed’s on Westcott Street for example.

The French cut off Lebanon from Syria in the early ‘20s, making the tiny country a Francophile hub, no doubt French cultural influence had a big effect on the culinary scene. Many of the city’s most expensive restaurants, down to the local eateries draw from the French. For example, Le Chef, one of Lebanon’s most famous traditional restaurants — also one of the least expensive, a three-course meal for two costs $20 flat — or Paul, a froufrou French-inspired Lebanese bakery chain, which could easily transplant itself to the banks of the Seine.

My advice, however, don’t be star-struck by fancy phrases like ‘French-fusion,’ ‘trendy sushi’ or ‘authentic Italian.’ The best food in Lebanon remains the unassuming and unaffected local specialties: hummus, mattabel (the eggplant spread called baba ghanoush in America), manoucheh (breakfast pizza), pita, stuffed grape leaves and copious — oh, copious — amounts of fresh, in-season produce.

The food sounds so simple, so light. Where’s the fat? How will I be full without Wingz and Domino’s and Insomnia Cookies? But after eating here for three weeks, I’ve rediscovered unprocessed, uncorrupted food.

I’ve even stopped cringing at the thought of ground beef because here it is hand ground by grandmothers in their kitchens or at the butcher the day you buy it, rather than in ammonia-ridden slaughterhouses in Middle America. Standing at the rooftop bar at my hostel, I often stare down on the Charles Helou Highway. Without fail, every five minutes a big cattle truck drives along, two dozen cows ‘mooing’ into the night. There’s something wonderfully civilized about seeing your food alive.

And unlike the Northeast, where supermarkets offer shiny, red, tasteless tomatoes all year long, Lebanon produces naturally grown, in-season fruits and vegetables, which have more flavor and sweetness than any I’ve tasted before.

This is not to say they don’t import things, too. Bananas surely don’t grow outside Beirut. And I’ll always have a soft spot for New York apples. Furthermore, the country does not enforce strict pesticide laws, so wash your fruit diligently.

But after nine months of pleading with friends to drive my roommates and I to the supermarket so that we could feast on unripe fruits and bargain-basement meats, and having no store in walking distance that offered anything but boxed dinners and kegs, I truly believe the limited access to healthy food around campus — unless you have a car or meal plan — is oppressive. Fresh, healthy food is a basic human right, one freely granted here in Lebanon. 

Beckie Strum is the editorial editor and a senior newspaper journalism and Middle Eastern studies major. To read more about her experiences in Beirut, Lebanon, where she is a summer intern with Time Out Beirut magazine, visit her blog at beckiestrum.wordpress.com. She can be reached at rastrum@syr.edu.

Published on June 20, 2011 at 12:00 pm