A man recently
killed his friend for picking up the check at an Istanbul restaurant. Anyone who’s familiar with the sport of Middle East check wrestling cannot be surprised. Dining companions can go at it for half an hour arguing over who gets to pay the check and thereby prove one’s magnificent munificence. I dread to think how this murder has raised the stakes in Beirut, home to some of the region’s most energetic check wrestlers: Now, if you don’t shoot your friend, his wife, and kids, you’re just pretending to want to pay the check. If you’re not willing to kill his entire clan and everyone else in the village, you just don’t want it enough.
It would not be the strangest thing French chef Olivier Gougeon has seen in a Middle East restaurant. Olivier and his Lebanese-American wife Marie-Hélène Moawad are owners of the Villa Clara, a hotel and restaurant in Beirut. It’s a beautiful old mansion in the Mar Mikhael neighborhood, the city’s liveliest and, given regional dynamics, maybe last nightlife spot. Olivier learned how to restore a house on the job and Marie-Hélène, who has a doctorate in business and marketing, decorated it with contemporary art by Lebanese and Syrian artists. Olivier and Marie-Hélène have two children, Clara, whom the hotel is named after, and her younger brother, Patrick. Villa Clara is a wonderful place, with winter mornings by the fire and fresh-baked bread for breakfast, but it’s not until evening that things really kick into action. The dining room is nearly always full, with Lebanese celebrities of one sort or another—politics, art, media—as well as foreigners, like the European ambassadors who convened a private party when I was there in late January.
