THE KINFOLK GARDEN
At his 18th-century villa, this Beirut sophisticate is using homegrown food to unite people across the political divide
In this extract from The Kinfolk Garden, we meet a Beirut sophisticate using homegrown food to bring people together.
Kamal Mouzawak could never have anticipated how his mission to put homegrown food on the plates of Beirutis would expand: first a market, then farm-to-table restaurants and now a guesthouse set amid mountainous produce gardens.
Kamal Mouzawak, the Beirut-based sophisticate behind some of Lebanon’s most celebrated community initiatives, felt ashamed of the traditional tannour that enclosed his sandwiches as a child. “Everyone else had this modern Arabic bread,” he recalls of the convenience food that had recently come into fashion among his classmates. Mouzawak, raised in a village 20km from the capital, was given old-fashioned flatbread and meals that revolved around seasonal produce: grapes picked in the summer, parsley plucked straight from the garden and citrus delivered in bulk by his uncle. “It was very much eating from the land,” he says. “It was not a concept, but our daily life.”
This firsthand knowledge of local traditions has proved instrumental in forging Mouzawak’s reputation as an arbiter of Lebanese hospitality. After establishing himself as a food and travel writer, he launched Souk El Tayeb, a weekly farmers’ market, in 2004. Producers from around the country were invited to sell their organic wares at stalls in central Beirut, offering an opportunity for direct contact between rural communities and the city dwellers who relied upon them. “People in cities think that food is a commodity that you buy from supermarket shelves,” says Mouzawak. “They forget that someone has produced or planted or cooked it.”
By 2009, Tawlet – a farm-to-table kitchen located in Beirut’s Mar Mikhael neighbourhood – was born. Lebanon still struggled with the legacy of deep-seated political and sectarian divisions, but Tawlet created a collaborative space where a rotation of women from across the country were invited to cook their villages’ delicacies. Regional outposts cropped up quickly, encouraging curious diners to venture from the coastal city of Saida to the lush agricultural splendour of the Bekaa Valley.
“In such a diverse place, you need to find common ground between all of these different people,” says Mouzawak. “The common ground is not the politics and it’s not the religion. The one and only expression that travels through time and place is an expression of tradition. It’s cuisine.”
This vision of national pride lends itself well to Mouzawak’s latest venture, Beit, a series of homes that have been converted into guesthouses. At Beit Douma – Mouzawak’s debut foray into hospitality – the pleasures of rural life take centre stage. First used as the private home of Mouzawak and his partner, fashion designer Rabih Kayrouz, the 18th-century villa was repurposed as a six-bedroom B&B in 2015. After sensitively restoring the stone facade, the couple filled its pastel-hued interior with a patchwork of antiques, framed prints, colorful suzani textiles and floral arrangements.
Outside, a vegetable garden supplies parsley for tabbouleh and Swiss chard for soups. Decorative elements were included, too. “We planted a thousand wild iris – big, white and very perfumed flowers that bloom in spring – and bushes of broom that cover all of the surrounding mountains, and tons of roses that are in their best habitat at high altitude,” says Mouzawak, who also points out the local olive and fruit trees that adorn the property.
Guests are encouraged to make themselves comfortable in the dar – a central living area common in traditional Levantine homes – or to assist with lunch preparations in the light-filled kitchen. In the garden, a mud-brick kiln is used for baking manakeesh, a delicious local doughy flatbread. Surrounded by beautiful nature and filled with nourishing food, Mouzawak hopes the experience “nurtures their souls”.
See our review of The Kinfolk Garden, page 126