Em Sherif, a high-end restaurant in Beirut, recently opened a more casual outpost that, according to its Emirates-based controlling shareholder ADMO Lifestyle Holding, “offers a modern and vibrant take on Lebanese cuisine” that’s rooted in “authentic flavors.” The most popular menu item seems to be an expensive sandwich that reimagines a classic Lebanese appetizer: slices of heirloom tomato are dressed with garlic sauce, sumac, green chili, spring onion, and olive oil, and placed between two pieces of sourdough bread. (Heirloom tomatoes are ubiquitous in Lebanon’s mountains, where they’re traditionally paired with garlic sauce and served as a mezze dish.) 

The shop also carries glitzy versions of inexpensive mouneh, or Lebanese pantry staples. The practice of preserving mouneh originates in mountain villages, too, where electricity shortages are common and supermarkets difficult to reach. Rural communities have long relied on mouneh — like pomegranate molasses, pickled stuffed eggplants, and jams — for survival during harsh winters and conflicts, including the French and British naval blockade of the Eastern Mediterranean in the First World War, when the Ottoman Army also laid siege to Mount Lebanon, resulting in a devastating famine. But at Em Sherif Deli, a jar of pomegranate molasses costs twenty dollars. (The shop lists its prices in American currency.) 

It has been six years since Lebanon experienced a state-engineered financial collapse, during which the country’s Central Bank conspired with the private banking sector to funnel citizens’ dollar deposits to the government, which used the money for wasteful projects carried out by contractors with ties to political elites. Lebanon’s working class was decimated, and over forty percent of the population fell below the poverty line. Many were forced to leave the country entirely. Since the financial crisis began, the “Dubaification” of downtown Beirut has proceeded at warp speed. Upscale coffee shops and restaurants, boutique hotels, and micro-wineries promising authentic Lebanese culture and cuisine have opened their doors across the city. The hope seems to be that wealthy Lebanese expats living between the Gulf and Europe will be enticed to return and spend money on repackaged nostalgia. President Joseph Aoun, who was elected in January of this year, has explicitly made it his mission to rehabilitate Lebanon’s relations with Gulf states in an effort to attract their residents during the tourist season. Over the summer, Aoun consistently referenced the number of flights landing at Beirut’s international airport as a testament to his success. In August, he also awarded the Silver Lebanese Order of Merit, a prize for services to Lebanon and acts of courage, to the owner of Em Sherif. 

Even as they draw tourists to Lebanon, businesses like Em Sherif are expanding outside of the country, too. Em Sherif now boasts branches in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. Bachir, a famous ice cream shop originally founded in the Mount Lebanon town of Bikfaya, recently opened branches in the UAE and Paris, where lines usually run around the block. Malak al Tawouk, a cheap chicken sandwich shop started in the coastal city of Jounieh, has also gone global. The proliferation of such places suggests that the main products Lebanon apparently can export these days are pastiche derivatives of its culture. 

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s unproductive agriculture sector primarily enriches politically connected financiers and landowners who charge farmers high rents, maintain monopolies on the country’s few exports, and continue monoculture practices that have depleted Lebanese soil for generations. In a country where twenty percent of arable land remains uncultivated, residents pay inflated prices for imported food. (In 2022, 96 percent of wheat consumed in the country was imported from Russia and Ukraine, and Lebanon relied on imports for eighty percent of its food overall.) And after a year of Israeli attacks, Lebanon’s farming capacity has been further diminished. The artillery campaign destroyed around two thousand acres of agricultural land in the southern and eastern parts of the country and cost farmers harvests. Israel’s white phosphorus bombing has destroyed an estimated forty to sixty thousand olive trees — which are grown by over fifty percent of Lebanese farmers — and will likely leave the land tainted for decades to come. 

While the government places its hopes in tourism and private businesses package Lebanese culture for global consumption, the people continue to suffer from poverty and diminishing hopes for viable futures in the country. In Lebanon, if you come from a working class background, your best bet is to somehow find a job abroad so you can return in the summers and pay thirteen dollars for a tomato sandwich your grandmother used to make you with ingredients from her garden. Take a selfie with it, and certify your ascent to a higher social stratum.