Lebanese cuisine - this mysterious word combination provokes for St.Petersburg inhabitants only vague associations with Oriental spices and ubiquitous shaverma. The fact is that until now there were no original Lebanese cuisine restaurants in St.Petersburg in principle - those where you can try the most tasty and health-giving (!) national dishes of Lebanon in the course of leisured meal, washing them down with rough "Ksara" red wine or "Chateau Kefraya" light rosy wine and smoke hookah after the substantial meal. The new restaurant BYBLOS has become precisely the real "small island of Lebanon" in St.Petersburg that opened its doors with hospitality in Vasiliyevskiy Ostrov in Maliy Prospect, 5.

The word "BYBLOS" provokes the most pleasing associations for cultivated dandies. However, the new restaurant was named so by no means in the honor of the famous brand: Byblos is one of the most ancient Beirut districts, the real open-air museum of Lebanon capital.

The history of the name "Byblos" is more complicated and interesting as it may seem at the first glance.

In the 12th century B.C. there was Phoenicia in the place of modern Lebanon. Phoenicians controlled all the Mediterranean trade routes and founded numerous colonies, Carthago became the most famous of them. One of the most notable Phoenician ports was named "Byble" and was famous for the trade of papyrus , writing material produced in Egypt out of stalks of "papyrus" water plant. Greeks respecting the abovementioned port gave papyrus the name of Byblos.

Original Lebanese cuisine

Nowadays the most luxury and fashionable restaurants of the USA, Europe and Canada inevitably include Lebanese cuisine dishes in their menu, and numerous middle-class snack bars opened by Lebanese emigrants enjoy great success. Most dishes traditionally considered to be Arabic - such as khummus, baklava, tabuli, fattush, falafel, baba ganush - are exactly of Lebanese origin.

An uninitiated person may realize that Lebanese and Arabic cuisines are all the same. Much too "democratic" kiosks with shaverma, undetermined mixture in hot paste, cheerful and importunate sellers-southerners...

All this does not have the slightest relation to the original Lebanese cuisine.