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Unless you know it’s there, you might miss this tiny shop hidden behind a bus stop on the outskirts of the northern Athenian suburb of Chalandri. Many Athens kiosks are twice, three times the size. But it’s certainly cozy, and once you’ve discovered it, you’ll keep going back, not just for the sweets – which would put a smile on the face of Scheherazade – but also for the spices, condiments, nuts, cardamom-perfumed coffee, arak and other hard-to-find Lebanese specialties, or maybe just to have a chat with the owner, Lina Tabbara.

We can’t remember when or how we first came upon Sweet Beirut, which is by no means on our usual route, but since then we rate it like an out-of-the-way Michelin restaurant: well worth the detour. This is where we can pick up fine bulgur for tabbouleh, freekeh (green wheat) for a more exotic soup or salad, pomegranate molasses, and za’atar, that mixture of thyme, sesame, sumac and salt which we mix with olive oil and slather on morning toast.

But though we’ve popped in several times over the past few years, we’d never managed a chat with Lina. Most of the time, her mother was tending the shop, whose fuchsia panels and Middle Eastern bibelots give it a welcoming atmosphere. Last week, in between customers, she told us the shop’s story. To our surprise, her English was as native as our own.

“Yes, I’m Lebanese, but I was born in California, where my diplomat father was lecturing in economics at Berkeley. My mother is Greek, a traveler herself, and they had met in Ethiopia. Then we moved to Lebanon, but my parents separated and my mother took me with her to Athens. So although I grew up here, I go back to Beirut whenever I can.

“That’s not often enough. Each time I would bring back loads of goodies, nostalgia food, for the family and friends. One day I found myself carrying 20 kilos of baklava in one arm and my baby daughter in the other. That’s when I decided maybe it was time to open a shop. Maybe there’d be a market.

“I’d been working in hotel management, but that wasn’t compatible with a small child. A low-rent shop close to home might be a way of combining motherhood and earning money. And that way I’d never be deprived of all the tastes and treats I love. We opened in September 2008. By that time I was eight months pregnant with my son. It was like giving birth twice over, but such different offspring.”

While we’re talking, a customer comes in asking for the fine bulgur she needs to make kibbeh and tabbouleh. A discussion follows on preparation techniques – soaking a little or a lot, in lemon juice or water. The woman says her grandfather was Lebanese, so the food was part of her upbringing.

After she leaves, Lina, who is tall and honey-blonde with a natural elegance, tells us that a good portion of her steady customers are of Lebanese (or Syrian and Palestinian) origin and that there’s a large, rather affluent community here, many of whom came in the late 1970s during the civil war and stayed. They tend to live in the southern suburbs because of their proximity to the sea and send their children to the Lycée Français. Other customers have simply had some contact with the country and developed a fondness for its tastes. All the Arab embassies are clients, and Sweet Beirut does a brisk business with corporate gift baskets – which include pricey, award-winning Lebanese red wines – as well as sales to restaurants and caterers.

Chances are if you’ve been eating dishes in Athens that contain za’atar, sumac or Lebanese tahini, the seasonings have come from Sweet Beirut.

“One of our best customers,” said Lina, “is Christoforos Peskias, the chef, who apart from Pi Box in Kifisia now has a catering company called Different and Different. He’s crazy about our tahini, for example, and once my father on a visit had some of his hummus ‘with a twist’ at Pi Box. He was quiet for a moment and then he said, ‘You know, this could be even better than what we eat in Lebanon.’”

Of course, as the name implies, the shop’s most popular items are its sweets. Lina imports nougats, loukoumia and nut brittles (pasteli) from Lebanon, which differ from the Greek versions by being more complex and less cloying. One type of pasteli combines pistachios with rose petals; the nougats may have pistachios and marzipan or apricot leather; the Turkish delight seems more generously stuffed with pistachios or almonds. Then there are pistachios set in crystallized sugar, which resemble New Orleans pralines and are given out to guests at weddings and baptisms, or maamoul, which look like Greek kourambiedes (almond shortbread) but are stuffed with nuts encased in a firmer dough.

More perishable offerings like the baklava and other phyllo pastries, as well as the maamoul, are made locally. After wrangles and delays with customs that left order after order stranded on shelves waiting for clearance until they spoiled, Lina decided to have these sweets made by a Syrian baker on the other side of Athens. He produces an irresistible range of these crunchy, nut-filled delicacies daily, so they are always impeccably fresh. They arrive already packed in festive crimson and light pinky-beige kilo or half-kilo boxes, ideal for a hostess gift or a present to yourself. As Lina says, no celebration in Lebanon is complete without a platter of assorted baklava.

This conversation makes us recall lunches with Lebanese friends of old, which invariably ended with these sublime pastries and a demitasse of cardamom-scented coffee. So much more interesting than espresso, this coffee to us is the essence of the Middle East. Lina says that the cardamom is more expensive than the coffee itself and that its presence is a sign of hospitality, bestowed only upon honored guests.

Memories flood back of Lebanon in the sixties, sunny, friendly and peaceful. We think we’ll be taking that detour to Sweet Beirut more often for a most welcome nostalgia fix. But even if you’ve never been to Lebanon, you could still become addicted to these treats.

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Published on December 04, 2014

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