Three thousand years of coastline,
on a plate in Ponderay.

Phoenicia was the narrow strip of Mediterranean coast that is Lebanon today — Tyre, Sidon, Byblos. Its people were sailors and traders who carried olive oil, wine, cedar and the alphabet itself across the ancient world. The ship on the sign is a Phoenician merchant ship. The food is what that coast still eats.

Made, not opened

The mezze here are the tell. Hummus and babaganoush are blended in-house. Falafel is fried to order from soaked chickpeas, not dropped from a bag. Grape leaves are rolled by hand. Kibbeh is shaped by hand. Muhammara — fire-roasted red pepper, walnut and pomegranate molasses — is the kind of dip a kitchen only bothers with if somebody grew up on it.

The spice blends are the recipe

Most of what separates one Levantine kitchen from another is the mix. Theirs are ground in-house and sold on the shelf under their own FP label: seven-spice, chicken and beef shawarma blends, kafta, zaatar, and a lentil soup mix. The jar you take home is what the kitchen is using ten feet away. See the house blends →

A restaurant with a grocery attached

The market is not a gift-shop rack by the register. It is a genuine Lebanese grocery — Najjar coffee and a Turkish coffee set to brew it in, Ceylon and karak and rosebud teas, halloumi and Bulgarian sheep's-milk cheese, Medjool dates and apricot sheets, kataifi dough, pomegranate molasses, harissa, olive oil by the litre or the three-litre tin, and a sweets shelf that runs from halva to Turkish delight to the pistachio chocolate everybody is asking about.

For a town this size, that shelf is the real story: it is the difference between eating Lebanese food once and cooking it at home.

Eating without meat

Levantine food is naturally generous to vegetarians, and this menu keeps that. Falafel, mujaddara, hummus, babaganoush, muhammara, tabouleh, fattoush, labneh, zaatar fries and grape leaves are all on the standing menu, and a gluten-free bread swap is available on any bread item.