Image: Serge Melki
Lebanese cuisine is a favorite in Paris. Lebanon was a French UN mandate from the end of WWI until WWII, (Beirut was nicknamed of “Paris of the East”) and the cuisine has a significant representation in la capitale. You’ll find many of the better restaurants in the 15th arrondissement but outposts are scattered everywhere else, anything from scruffy working-class cafés and street-vendors to elegant, classical cuisine in up-scale restaurants.
On the rue Saint-André-des-Arts there is a particularly nice shop, very well known amongst the local student population. Highlights include the lebanese pizza, (with a beautifully light and crispy base), lebanese sandwiches and good falafel, hummous and lebneh (a white yogurt-ish sauce). They also have a big wide-screen tv showing 60s movies in Arabic, when Beirut was arguably the most cosmopolitan city in the Arab world.
Chez Le Libanais
35 rue Saint-André-des-Arts, 6th
Ph: 01 40 46 07 39
Hours: 7/7 10am-2am
Métro: St-Michel (4), Odeon (4, 10), Cluny-La-Sorbonne (10)