food&drink
While Kitous is not actually from Lebanon, he shrugs with an “agghh” hand motion that signals a same same but different philosophy. “We borrow each other’s ingredients, each other’s dishes and everyone claims it as their own. But it’s all about sharing.” Traditional dips and flatbreads arrive in quick succession: hummus and baba ganoush as well as a few surprises, including a moreish pink, beetroot-infused yoghurt; muhammarah, a spicy red pepper and roasted mixed nut dip; and koussa bil tahini, a courgette purée infused with tahini, lemon juice, garlic and yoghurt. “I came on holiday and I am still on holiday because I’m enjoying this so much!” he beams as he shovels each dip onto a sliver of bread and practically feeds me with his own hands. I take the morsels before they actually reach my lips and try to contain my inner Jewish mother with all the doubledipping. “This, for me, doesn’t feel like work – it’s like I’m receiving someone at home, that’s how it feels. I realised this week that it was 21 years since I opened my first restaurant – wow! People say it’s a long time but I didn’t see the time go. I don’t do fashionable or trendy. What I’m doing is what we’ve been doing as a culture for hundreds of years. Sharing is not a new thing for us. It’s honest, real, healthy food. For me, it’s not about restaurant cuisine. It’s about home-cooked food.” A second course starts filtering through: kibbé lahmé, fried lamb and cracked wheat parcels filled with onions, minced meat and pine nuts, as well as a few vegetarians varieties of pumpkin with walnuts and pomegranate molasses; halloumi, feta cheese and parsley; and spinach and sumac. Grilled halloumi steaks, soujoc (home-made spicy sausages) and a Lebanese pizza combining the two is put before me, as well as a range of salads, chargrilled chicken wings and spicy sautéed potatoes, to be washed down with a choice of two teas and four jugs of colourful lemonades and a never-ending supply of crispy za’atar-covered bread. “The moment someone sits down we just give them food!” he says, as if this is a normal occurrence for a Monday lunchtime, especially when he’s on a convenient juice diet in training for one of the many marathons he’s always running for charity. “Any time of the day – people say ‘ah what a waste’ but we don’t waste. You know if we have way too much food to eat the next day we just share it with our
neighbours. In our culture we serve a lot of food because that is how we show hospitality, that’s how when someone walks in we make them feel welcome.” Unable to make much of a dent on my own, Kitous insists on packing up every dish for me to take home for dinner (met with a cartoon-like drool from the other half, who couldn’t believe his luck on what’s usually DIY dinner night). He also hands me a beautiful basket that he picked up in a souk in Morocco years ago, which he bought in bulk and now saves to fill with presents (they also line the shelves at Comptoir). It’s overflowing with both of his beautiful cookbooks – Comptoir Libanais and Comptoir Libanais Express – as well as a tower of baklava, teas, spices, and all other manner of exotic treats. It’s so heavy that he insists on carrying the whole lot to my next destination, a good 15-minute walk away, after my refusal to let him put me in a cab all the way home. He genuinely wants to know my opinion once I’ve tried each spice at home: “When I need an opinion or advice I only ask my female friends – please the woman and you also please the man.” Kitous is a talker and it’s hard to get a word in edgeways, but above anything, his passion, dedication, and genuine generosity of spirit make him one of the most interesting people I’ve ever had the pleasure of sharing a delicious 30-course lunch with. He’s constantly on the go with meetings scheduled hourly, but he doesn’t look at his watch once. While he says he’s not interested in breaking the celebrity chef world, I’m not totally convinced. He admires people like Jamie Oliver, who have made good food more accessible. “Oliver is a guy who stayed true to who he was, he is very humble and he cooks for everyone and that’s what our food is, it’s for everyone,” but his worst fear in life is for someone to say “he used to be good”, something that, eventually, seems to come with the celebrity chef territory, when the star of the show spreads themselves too thinly. But all he’d have to do was bring the critics in for a smattering of dishes and they’d be eating out of the palm of his hand. n
“Jamie Oliver is a guy who stayed true to who he was; he cooks for everyone”
Comptoir Libanais, 65 Wigmore Street, W1U 020 7935 1110; comptoirlibanais.com Levant, Jason Court, 76 Wigmore Street, W1U 020 7224 1111; levant.co.uk Both recipe books are available at tonykitous.com
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