Cafés in Lebanon Beirut

Lebanese coffee, not Turkish

In February 2026 the Syndicate of Restaurant, Café, Entertainment and Pastry Owners asked restaurants and cafés to write "Lebanese coffee" instead of "Turkish coffee" on menus and to use the name with customers.⁴ Its description: finely ground arabica, sometimes with ground cardamom added during boiling, and a smoother, less bitter cup than the Turkish version.⁴

The coffee is served from a copper rakwa made in Tripoli, in the north, into a Lebanese cup, and the syndicate's head, Antoine al-Rami, said it "has become part of Lebanese heritage".⁵ At home it dominates. In 2017 the Illy distributor estimated espresso at under 1% of the coffee drunk in Lebanon.²

Family brands and the old roasting shops

Lebanon's main brands are family roasters. BLOMInvest dates Café Abi Nasr to 1956, Café Najjar to 1957, Maatouk to 1960, Super Brasil to 1970 and Café Daniel to 1977; Najjar led exports, and its share of production for local sale and export reached 65–70%.²

Smaller shops roast to order. Rajab Chabaro, Abdul Qader Saab and Jamil Davoud opened a coffee and spice shop downtown in 1922; the Chabaro shop closed when fighting reached the center in 1975 and reopened on Mar Elias Street in 1979.⁶ In 2016 Mohammad Saab still asked each customer about sugar, roast color and cardamom, and kept the answers in a notebook.⁶

The Younes family has been in the coffee trade since 1935. Its Hamra branch, opened before the civil war, carried on after the downtown shop was destroyed in the fighting.⁶

Pounds, dollars and the price of a cup

From December 1997 the Lebanese pound was pegged at LL 1,507.5 to the US dollar. Pressure on the peg began in 2019; on 1 February 2023 the official rate was cut by 90% to LL 15,000, and in 2024 it was set at LL 89,500.⁷

Café prices followed the currency. In February 2022 some Hamra cafés charged LL 20,000 for an espresso, LL 25,000 for a Turkish coffee and LL 40,000 for a cappuccino or flat white, Global Voices reported, while the monthly minimum wage was LL 675,000.⁸

Menus then moved to dollars. A Tourism Ministry circular of 2 June 2022 let tourism establishments advertise prices in US dollars, and later memos extended it until Tourism Minister Laura El Khazen Lahoud cancelled it on 23 January 2026.⁹ Price lists must now be approved in Lebanese pounds and the day's rate posted; customers may pay in pounds or in dollars at the official rate.⁹

Beirut: Hamra, the Corniche and Mar Mikhael

Hamra Street, near the American University of Beirut, was the center of the city's intellectual life in the 1960s and 1970s, with sidewalk cafés and theaters that drew writers and artists from across the region.¹⁰

The Corniche runs 4.8 km around the Beirut promontory from Saint George Bay past Raouché, lined with palms and push-cart vendors selling snacks and drinks.¹¹ On its Manara stretch, Café Rawda has been run by generations of the Chatila family; its earliest documented photograph dates from 1935, and Maroun Baghdadi shot part of his 1980 film Hamasat there.¹²

East of downtown, Rue Gouraud in Gemmayzeh runs into Rue Arménie in Mar Mikhael, where from about 2010 cafés, bars and galleries replaced hardware and car-parts shops.¹³ Both districts were among the worst hit by the port explosion of 4 August 2020, which damaged more than 8,000 buildings across the city, 640 of them historic.¹⁴