Renowned restaurant serves south Lebanon through war and peace
Al Jawad, a restaurant deeply entrenched in the southern region of Lebanon, has been a culinary fixture since 1992. Generations have grown up with the flavours from the first branch, in the city of Tyre.
It has become a place where families and friends gather, especially during turbulent times such as now.
It thrived despite Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon between 1985 and 2000, and throughout the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Today, the restaurant is bustling with customers, despite cross-border fighting between Hezbollah and Israel – an extension of the war in Gaza that threatens to spill over into Lebanon.
“We have been coming here since I was a child. I used to come with my family,” said Myriam, 35, from Tyre.
“It feels like home. We come here all the time.”
She visited the restaurant with a friend, accompanied by a baby who represents the next generation of Al Jawad customers.
“Our customers treat the employees like they’re family,” said Ziad Hammoud, operations manager of the restaurant.
The four-storey restaurant is renowned for its high-quality food and diverse menu, encompassing traditional Lebanese mezze and international dishes, as well as its relaxed atmosphere.
There are five branches across the country.
On the television in the original branch in Tyre, the news is always on.
It is something customers depend on, “especially now because of the situation [in Gaza]”, Mr Hammoud said.
The Hezbollah-owned Al Manar news channel provides constant coverage of the war. South Lebanon is one of the strongholds of the Iran-backed militia.
But Mr Hammoud rejected the suggestion the restaurant was strongly affiliated to the group. Families from different backgrounds are regular customers.
“Because this community is considered a stronghold for Hezbollah, people think Al Jawad is Hezbollah. But that is not true,” he said.
Many customers come to watch the news. Mr Hammoud said he recently asked for the TV to be switched off.
“I’d had enough of watching kids and people dying,” he said. “So they turned it off. After about an hour, I came back and found customers had requested for the news to be turned back on.”
Abu Hussein, a waiter who was among the Tyre restaurant’s first employees, said broadcasts about the war were “often quite emotional”.
Al Jawad was founded by five brothers. They established a small bakery in 1992 in their family home, which was then converted into a restaurant.
They started on the first floor, opening a fast-food section before expanding to a second floor.
“We call it the puzzle restaurant, because there was no planning,” Mr Hammoud said with a smile.
During summer, about 7,000 people a day visit Al Jawad’s two southern branches.
But the fighting at the Lebanon-Israel border, a few kilometres away from Tyre, has affected business and halted expansion plans.
In October, a new branch was planned to open in Tyre.
Mr Hammoud said 320 employees were hired to work in the outlet.
The latest establishment would have been the largest, accommodating 900 customers, and required a total investment of about $3.5 million.
It was set to open on October 7. “We asked people to go home then we locked down everything,” he said.
“We could not open in this unstable situation.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen and given the investment, we were relying on a big turnout of people.”
The two southern venues have reported a 60 per cent drop in sales, but business in Beirut has stayed the same.
However, Al Jawad has experience surviving hardship.
Mr Hammoud said the southern branches remained open during the month-long war in 2006.
“We kept working until the last moment,” he said.
Mr Hammoud said the people of southern Lebanon were resilient. “Every day we say goodbye to each other because nobody knows what’s going to happen. While we sit in this interview, people are dying in south Lebanon and Palestine,” he added.
Mr Hammoud is keen to build on the restaurant’s popularity and said Al Jawad plans to expand as a franchise outside Lebanon.