Lebanese bistro set to open in Delray
Amar Mediterranean Bistro, dishing Lebanese family recipes, set to open in Delray Beach
After a globetrotting food career burning bright alongside star chefs Bobby Flay and Thomas Keller, restaurant owner Nicolas Kurban needed to return home again.
The Lebanon-born businessman, after 25 years of managing food and beverage programs at hotel-casinos from the Borgata in Jersey City to Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas, craved the simple pleasures of his parents’ home cooking in Beirut. In late January Kurban plans to open his newest restaurant, Amar Mediterranean Bistro, on Delray Beach’s Atlantic Avenue, with modern Lebanese dishes crafted from old family recipes.
“In the end, the pandemic made this happen,” says Kurban, who lives in Boca Raton with his wife and daughters. “I would be lying if I didn’t miss my other dream jobs, and it was fun opening restaurants in Shanghai and Tokyo and Barcelona, but having your own thing is exciting.”
The 60-seat Amar Mediterranean Bistro at 522 E. Atlantic Ave. replaces the former Scuola Vecchia Pizza e Vino pizzeria,
“When I tell them it’s Lebanese, they say to me, ‘Thank God, it’s about time,’ ” How many more Italian restaurants are you going to have on Atlantic Avenue? This area needs variety.”
Nicolas Kurban, owner of Amar Mediterranean Bistro
and sits one block east of the Delray iPic theater. The industrial-chic bistro seats 48 inside and 12 more on its sidewalk patio, and is adorned in brick walls, marble tables and leather banquettes, rustic wood shelving and brass lighting.
At least 60 visitors last week alone have knocked on the front door to inquire about Amar, which convinces Kurban that Lebanese food fills a critical void in Atlantic Avenue cuisine.
“When I tell them it’s Lebanese, they say to me, ‘Thank God, it’s about time,’ “he says. “How many more Italian restaurants are you going to have on Atlantic Avenue? This area needs variety.”
Not that Atlantic Avenue is devoid of Mediterranean fare; Amar shares the dining drag with mini Greek chain Taverna Opa to the west and other elegant eateries (La Cigale, Joseph Wine Bar) to the south and north. Inside the 1,200-square-foot bistro, roughly half the menu will be devoted to hot and cold mezze, or shareable plates, and entrées begin with pita from Amar’s wood-burning oven.
Half of the menu, still being finalized, will consist of entrees and desserts that spotlight Kurban’s parents’ recipes. One of his mother’s home-cooked dishes is sheikh el mehchi, or eggplant stuffed with ground beef, pine nuts, tomato sauce and onions. (Sheikha el mehchi, its vegan equivalent, substitutes chickpeas for beef.)
Kurban credits his father, Elie, for Amar’s hummus and marinated kebab dishes such as chicken shish taouk, featuring skewered charbroiled chicken breast, charred onions, tomatoes and a Lebanese garlic sauce called toum. Desserts, created by Kurban’s wife, Susanna, include tahini chocolate cake and labneh panna cotta.
Kurban gained his earliest exposure to Lebanese cuisine as a teenager working at his father’s restaurant in Beirut, which offered traditional dishes “but was like a Cheesecake Factory with pizza, steak and other international stuff,” he says. He moved to the United States to earn his bachelor’s degree in hotel management from The Ohio State University but returned to Lebanon to open La Olivier, a smallplates restaurant.
After returning to the States in 1999, Kurban spent the next 20 years in the corporate food and beverage world. He opened restaurants in Las Vegas for Wolfgang Puck and Borgata hotels in New Jersey. He opened outposts of Thomas Keller’s Bouchon bakeries in California and New York, then left to open Four Seasons and Kimpton Hotels across the world.
“I was getting homesick,” says Kurban, who quit his extravagant lifestyle in 2019 to focus on opening Amar.
“I just knew there was a demand for Mediterranean food here,” he says. “With the pandemic not going away, this is something I needed to do something for myself.”
Amar Mediterranean Bistro, at 522 E. Atlantic Ave., will open to the public on Thursday, Jan. 28. Go to AmarDelray.com.