Beirut Eats

Since the civil war ended, they tell me, Beirut’s wheel-and-deal impulse has blazed up afresh and there’s a new restaurant on every corner. Not that many of us will check this out very soon. Last time I looked, the State Department still wouldn’t let Americans visit Lebanon.

But if you’re curious about what a Lebanese restaurateur would do with a decent budget, check out the new Marouch on La Cienega Boulevard. No Formica counter tops and Air Liban travel posters here. This is a Lebanese glamour restaurant, slathered with marble and wrought iron, glorified with tall windows and Corinthian columns, ablaze with light.

The bar, in particular, is bathed in such a warm golden glow it would probably be physically impossible to weep in your beer. (Or wine, for that matter. Marouch conscientiously stocks five Lebanese wines, credibly French in style, amid more familiar Californian and French selections.)

You could say it’s a mom-and-pop restaurant that grew up and expanded to Restaurant Row because it’s an outgrowth of Marouch, everybody’s favorite East Hollywood Lebanese place. Amid the grandiose decor--reminiscent of a certain kind of Greek restaurant--there are big photos of famous Lebanese views, such as the cedars of Lebanon, the Roman temple at Baalbek and the bay of Jounieh, just as at the original Marouch.

The food belongs in the original Marouch’s part of the Lebanese restaurant spectrum too--not as ambitious as Al Amir or as richly homey as Sunnin, but sharply conceived. A good example is fattouch (more often spelled fattoush), a salad of parsley, cucumber and toasted pita bread. The toast is very crisp and the cucumber is the dense-textured ribbed variety sometimes called ghoota, making for a substantial, chewy sort of salad, appetizingly tart with ground sumac.

The real glory of Lebanese cuisine is the set of snack dishes known as mezzeh. They’re available here by themselves or in combinations. The larger combos, at fairly steep prices, look like a staggering amount of food. The moderate combo for two ($40) includes unusually rich and mild labneh (thickened yogurt), a well-balanced hummus, very light tabbouleh, two pretty good deep-fried lamb-and-wheat meatballs (kibbeh), a tricorn-shaped pastry filled with spinach (fatayer), a mild cheese called halum and the walnut paste muhammara. The last is spectacular--mildly hot with red pepper, rich, tangy and garlicky, just about the best muhammara I’ve ever had.

There are a lot of other choices on the mezzeh side of the menu, a particularly good one being sogok (more often spelled sujuk), a generous portion of dense, cuminy beef sausage. But even if you don’t order an appetizer, you won’t have to jump into your meal cold; everything comes with pita bread, rather mild reddish pickled turnips, green onions, pickled peppers and olives.

The entrees are basically kebabs--lamb kebab, ground beef kebab (kufta), chicken kebab (shish tawouk) or a selection of all three, served with lots of rice and some tomato-and-cucumber salad artfully arranged on the same plate. The unusual kebab is fatayel, said to be lamb filet mignon but not quite as tender as that might suggest. It’s garnished with bits of lightly fried bell pepper.

Alongside these are several varieties of shawarma, the Lebanese equivalent of the Greek gyro: slices from a mass of meat grilled on a vertical spit. Marouch makes beef, lamb and chicken shawarmas. The chicken, a novelty, tastes more like red meat than you might expect, but the slightly gamey lamb version is best.

Needless to say, in this Zankou Age, you can get roast chicken with garlic sauce. Or usually--one night I ordered it and they were actually out (out of roast chicken!) so I had the quail instead. It was a lot of work for the meat, as quail usually is, but beautifully grilled. Marouch also offers fish, very simply cooked with lemon to squeeze on it (the menu mentions a tahineh sauce, but I didn’t find any on my sea bass).

Dessert features baklava--and features it and features it. The waiter can bring out a plate of about seven varieties, stuffed with different nuts and arranged in tube and lozenge and various other shapes. For my money, the best dessert is osmanliyyeh, a delicate, shimmering milk gelatin scented with orange blossom.

And then you can have a Turkish (pardon me, Lebanese) coffee and go home. It’s sort of like going to Beirut without getting on the State Department’s bad side.

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WHERE TO GO

Marouch, 137 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 289-0654. Full bar. Valet parking. All credit cards. Takeout. Dinner for two, food only, $42 to $70.

WHAT TO GET

Fattouch, muhammara, sogok, lamb shawarma, shish tawouk, osmanliyyeh.