Dear reader,
I think it’s time for an intervention. Or at least, a confession.
I’m an addict. But I’m also just a girl. A girl who hyperfixates on specific foods until they become my entire personality. My history of "phases" might be concerning.
Take my cheese phase, for example. I can’t count how many times I almost lost my life to a mozzarella stick in a restaurant. Literally gasping for air, choking on a string of cheese, with my immediate instinct being gulping Pepsi from someone else’s cup because I had already finished mine.
During the COVID lockdown, there was the Parmesan phase, where I decided pasta was an unnecessary middleman and started eating the block in cubes like they were grapes.
Speaking of Pepsi, specifically Diet Pepsi, I’ve used the "it’s diet" excuse to justify a truly shameful daily intake of caffeine and aspartame for years. I won’t go into the numbers because I’d like to keep some of my dignity, but I’m officially one week sober.
Then there was the beer phase. For a few months, I wasn't even drinking the beer, I was a curator. I bought every "cool-looking" beer from every country I could find in the supermarket until my fridge looked like a U.N. glass bottle. My brother started calling me an alcoholic when I gave up the collecting and started the drinking. I turned the empties into an art project, lining them up and melting candles over them until my kitchen looked like a haunted pub. I stopped mainly because the wax got everywhere.
Nowadays, burgers are my entire personality. I’m basically a database of burger spots in Lebanon. Name any place and I’ll give you a 95% accurate breakdown of its bun-to-meat ratio. It’s gotten so bad my jaw is basically perpetually dislocated. My dentist told me that if I’m going to keep this up, I should at least use a fork and knife. I told him absolutely not. I’m an addict, not a coward.
And yet, now that the warm weather is back, my weirdest addiction has resurfaced: ice cubes. Every summer, without fail, I become my freezer’s inventory manager, refilling the trays like i’m preparing for the apocalypse. If you hear a loud crunch crunch crunch coming from my direction, don’t be alarmed, it’s just me, and the cubes.
Now that I’ve said all of that, if you happen to share my obsessive nature and have an addiction to Mouhalabiyye, I’m going to feed right into it: you have to try Carla Rebeiz’s three unique recipes. Whether it’s the simple Pistachio, the Matcha, or the Black Sesame Mouhalabiyye.
Melissa Manouchakian
Distribution editor
Gourmet picks
The Senegalese capital, influenced by a significant and long-established Lebanese diaspora, offers sambusik, shawarma, and kafta in numerous restaurants, but only a few stay true to traditional flavors. Here is a selection of six of the best Lebanese foodie addresses on the land of "teranga!”
Solidarity
In Marseille, Moga is hosting a solidarity day on Sunday, May 10, in support of Lebanon and Palestine, in partnership with local Lebanese associations. The event offers an opportunity to discover a distinctive Lebanese-Syrian restaurant with a strong sense of social engagement.
