50 Fun Facts About Lebanese Food

Arak, the Lebanese national drink, is flavoured with what?

Anise. The seeds are crushed and distilled with a grape spirit, and their oil is what gives arak its faint liquorice taste: ouzo, raki and pastis belong to the same family.

Meghli, a spiced rice pudding, is traditionally served to celebrate what?

A newborn baby. Visitors who come to see the child are each handed a bowl topped with nuts and coconut, and Christians make it again at Christmas to mark the birth of Jesus.

Which empire ruled Lebanon from 1516 to 1918 and left its mark on Lebanese sweets?

The Ottomans. Four centuries of Turkish rule brought baklava-style pastries and made lamb more popular; the French, who governed next, left flan and croissants behind.

Toum, the fluffy white sauce served with Lebanese grilled chicken, gets its punch from which raw ingredient?

Garlic. Toum is simply the Arabic word for it; pounded with salt and whipped with oil and lemon, the cloves turn into something as thick and white as mayonnaise.

Which Lebanese street food is a deep-fried ball of ground beans and herbs?

Falafel. The beans are only soaked overnight before grinding, never cooked: tinned ones hold too much water, and the balls would fall apart in the hot oil.

In Lebanese kitchens, what does mouneh refer to?

Preserving food for the year. Late summer goes on putting up bulgur, pickles, jams, tomato paste and labneh, a habit born of the need for food security that families have fallen back on in wartime.

Awarma, a staple of the Lebanese winter larder, is what?

Lamb confit. The meat is fried slowly until its fat renders, then sealed under that fat in jars so it keeps through the winter: the Lebanese cousin of Turkish kavurma.

Paper-thin marquq bread is cooked on what?

A metal saj. The dough is tossed and stretched by hand until it is almost see-through, then flipped onto the domed griddle to bake.

Beirut's street ka'ak, hung from a pole on the bakers' carts, is nicknamed after which object it resembles?

A handbag. The sesame-crusted loaf is baked as a lopsided ring with a thin 'handle', so vendors can string dozens along a pole; it is torn open and spread with za'atar or soft cheese.

Which Lebanese pastry is a triangle of dough folded around spinach and onions?

Fatayer. A round of dough is pinched up on three sides over the filling to make the triangle, and the spinach version is sharpened with plenty of lemon.

Ejjeh, made with heaps of chopped herbs and scallions, is the traditional Lebanese what?

Omelette. It is closer to a frittata than to a French one, because the eggs are only there to bind a thick mass of chopped herbs, so it sets firm.

Baladi, a cheese made by Lebanese shepherds, carries which nickname?

The cheese of the mountains. It is made up in the high pastures from unpasteurised goat's, sheep's and cow's milk, uncultured and unaged, so it has to be eaten fresh.

Darfiyeh, a seasonal cheese from northern Lebanon, is matured inside what?

A salty goat skin. The hide is cleaned, salted and tied shut at the legs to make a sack, then packed with goat's-milk cheese and left to ripen in damp caves for months.

Shanklish cheese balls are rolled in thyme or which other coating?

Chilli flakes. The aged yogurt cheese is rolled in red pepper for heat or thyme for fragrance, and it grows harder and more pungent as it dries.

Bamieh bi-zeit, a Lebanese stew, combines tomato with which vegetable?

Okra. Bamieh is simply the word for the vegetable and 'bi-zeit', in oil, marks the meatless version; cooks find frozen pods work nearly as well as fresh, so the stew needn't wait for the season.

Which Beqaa Valley town, known for its outdoor riverside restaurants, is famous for its arak distilleries?

Zahlé. Arak is distilled from grapes, and the town sits among the valley's vineyards, home to wineries and distilleries alike: it styles itself the 'city of wine and poetry'.

Daoud bacha meatballs, simmered in tomato sauce, are often made with which nut?

Pine nuts. They are toasted and scattered over the meatballs, or tucked inside them, and the dish is cooked with extra sauce because it is eaten over vermicelli rice.

Fattoush, the dish of torn pita with cucumber, tomato and mint, is also known as what?

Peasants' salad. Farmers threw in whatever vegetables were to hand, and the fried or toasted bread on top began as a thrifty way to use up stale loaves.

Tabbouleh is built mainly around which finely chopped herb?

Parsley. In a Lebanese tabbouleh the herb is the salad and the bulgur only a sprinkle; it is the supermarket versions abroad that turn the proportions upside down.

Lebanese 'white coffee', offered to guests in place of the real thing, contains no coffee and is scented with what?

Orange blossom. The flower essence is stirred into a steaming cup, sweetened or not, and café blanc is poured for guests who skip the usual coffee because it is caffeine-free and thought to be soothing.

Kousa mahshi is a dish of stuffed what?

Squash or zucchini. The flesh cored out to make room for the rice is never thrown away: it is cooked up as a small dish of its own, or fried with the morning eggs.

Balila, served warm with lemon and spices, is a simple Lebanese dish of boiled what?

Chickpeas. They are served hot and left whole, dressed with lemon and spices, rather than mashed into a dip or ground and fried.

Mutabbel, the smoky aubergine and tahini dip, is often topped with which garnish?

Pomegranate seeds. They add a sweet pop against the smoke of the charred aubergine, and it is the tahini that makes this mutabbel: a traditional baba ghanouj goes without it.

Mujaddara, the lentil and rice dish, is garnished with what?

Sautéed onions. They are cooked low and slow for half an hour or more until dark and sweet, and cooks insist the dish is not the same without them.

The Arabic name mujaddara describes brown lentils dotted through pale rice, and literally means what?

Pockmarked. The lentils scattered through the pale grains are the pockmarks, and the word shares its root with the Arabic for smallpox: an unflattering name for comfort food.

Kibbeh nayyeh is kibbeh prepared in which way?

Raw. The meat has to be bought the day it is eaten, and it was traditionally pounded to a paste in a stone mortar before food processors took over the job.

Kebbe lakteen, a meatless kibbeh, is made from bulgur and which vegetable?

Pumpkin. The purée is kneaded with bulgur to make the shell, and the filling is deliberately sour to balance its sweetness; with no meat anywhere, it was vegan long before the word caught on.

Shish barak, meat dumplings in yogurt sauce, is often called Lebanese what?

Ravioli. Each round of dough is folded over the meat into a half-moon, then its two corners are pinched together around a fingertip, so the finished parcel looks more like tortellini.

Sfiha, the small open-faced meat pie, is most associated with which Beqaa Valley town?

Baalbek. Its version is tiny, with the sides pinched up around the meat, and the town's butchers bake it by the kilo for weddings, funerals and Ramadan evenings.

Which grain, harvested green and set alight in the field for a smoky taste, goes into Lebanese soups and pilafs?

Freekeh. The fire burns off the straw and chaff and leaves the green wheat smoky, and the charred husks are then rubbed away, which is what the Arabic name means: 'rubbed'.

Which city's council voted in 2024 to declare it the 'shawarma capital of Canada'?

Ottawa. Lebanese families who arrived from 1975, as civil war broke out at home, opened so many shawarma shops that the capital is said to have more of them than anywhere else in Canada.

Sayadieh, Lebanon's rice-and-fish dish, is traditionally served with which sauce?

Tahini sauce. Cooks call it tarator: the sesame paste turns thick and clumpy when the lemon juice first goes in, then loosens into a silky, pourable sauce as it is whisked.

Sayadieh, Lebanon's rice-and-fish dish, takes its name from the Arabic word for what?

Fisherman. The same Arabic word also means hunter, and the dish began as the crews' own meal, with the heads and bones of the day's fish boiled into the stock that cooks the rice.

Samkeh harra, Lebanon's 'spicy fish', pairs its chilli heat with which fresh herb?

Cilantro. Harra means hot: the herb is cooked with chilli into a sauce for the fish, and cooks finish the dish with a scatter of toasted nuts.

Znoud el-sit, a fried and syrup-soaked filo roll, is filled with what?

Clotted cream. The rolls are said to be named after a lady's arms, and they are a Ramadan favourite, eaten once the day's fast is broken.

Sfouf, Lebanon's yellow semolina cake, gets its colour from what?

Turmeric. A spoonful or two colours the whole tray gold, and the cake needs no eggs at all, which makes it the one Lebanese cooks turn to when the fridge is bare.

Booza, the chewy 'Arabic ice cream', is traditionally made by what process?

Pounding and stretching. Orchid-root flour and mastic resin make the mix elastic, and beating it rather than churning air into it is what leaves it so dense and chewy.

Lebanese seven-spice varies from kitchen to kitchen, but which of these spices is in almost every version?

Cinnamon. Allspice, black pepper and cloves are the other near-constants; after that cooks argue over cumin, ginger, nutmeg or fenugreek, so no two families' jars taste quite alike.

Jallab, the sweet drink, is made from carob, dates, rose water and what?

It is sold over crushed ice with pine nuts and raisins on top, and is especially popular during Ramadan.

Which South American drink did returning emigrants turn into a daily ritual in Lebanon's Druze mountain villages?

Maté. Migrants brought the habit home from Argentina more than a century ago, gourd and silver straw included, and in Druze homes the kettle goes on for it as soon as a guest arrives.

Which of these beers comes from a Lebanese brewery founded near Beirut in 1933?

Almaza. Heineken held control of the brewery for some twenty years, until a member of the founding Jabre family bought it back at the end of 2021.

The cave cellars at Château Ksara, a Beqaa winery founded by Jesuits, date back to which people?

The Romans. The Jesuits found the caves only in 1898, by the winery's own telling while smoking out a fox that had been raiding their chickens; today the cellars run for two kilometres.

Arak is clear in the bottle but turns which colour when water is added?

Milky white. The flavouring oil dissolves in strong alcohol but not in water, so diluting the spirit forces it out as a mist of tiny droplets that scatter the light.

Lebanese migrants' shawarma, sold in Puebla as 'Arab tacos', evolved into which Mexican taco?

Al pastor. Mexican diners never took to the original meat, so the migrants' children switched to pork in a chilli marinade, kept the upright spit, and the 'shepherd's taco' was born.

Knafeh Nabulseyeh, the cheese-filled pastry soaked in syrup, takes its name from which city?

Nablus. The West Bank city fills it with its own firm white cheese, which is kept in brine and so has to be soaked to draw out the salt before it can go into a dessert.

How does labneh differ from ordinary Greek-style yogurt?

It is strained longer and salted. Twelve hours or more in a knotted cloth leaves something close to cream cheese; drained further still, it is firm enough to roll into balls and keep under olive oil.

Besides dried herbs, sesame and salt, which spice defines the za'atar blend?

Sumac. The ground berries give the blend its sour edge, and Lebanese cooks add so much that their za'atar turns dark red, with a little salt to balance the sharpness.

Which za'atar-topped flatbread, the classic Lebanese breakfast, joined UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2023?

Manakish. The baker dimples the dough all over with his fingertips so the topping stays put, and families have long carried their own za'atar from home to the neighbourhood oven each morning.

In 2010, some 300 Lebanese cooks reclaimed a world record from Israel with a ten-tonne plate of what?

Hummus. The 10,452 kg serving more than doubled a record set four months earlier in an Arab town near Jerusalem, one round in a long 'hummus war' over who owns the dish.

What does a ma'amoul cookie's shape tell a guest?

Its filling. Dates, pistachios and walnuts each get a mould of their own, so a guest can pick a favourite from the tray without biting in; a sharp knock on the table frees each cookie.