Lebanese Festival

When I showed up at Henry and Remsen for the Our Lady of Lebanon church festival, things were just starting up. While volunteers were still busy constructing tents and taping down tablecloths, the grills were already hot, the food tables laden, and the music blaring. These people know how to prioritize.

A long buffet offered all kinds of meat and vegetable options: lamb and chicken kebabs, kibbeh (ground meat and spices) pressed into a huge casserole, dolmas, flaky savory pies, grilled corn, and all the side salads you'd expect. We got a sampler platter with lamb, muhadarra, tabloule, green beans, and fatoush, then lined up for some sajj bread.

The sajj cooking stations were metal domes heated from inside by coals or some other kind of roaring fire, and standing next to them in 90-degree weather tested your true desire for some sajj. The volunteer cooks made it look irresistible, though, laying thin discs of dough onto the hot metal and slathering them with different appetizing fillings from meat sauce to cheese to zaatar paste. When the underside was crispy and slightly blackened, they’d fold them in half and serve them straight off the stove: a Middle Eastern quesadilla. A friend got one of the meat-filled versions, and I asked for a plain piece, just to try it out.

We sat down at one of the long tables and started in on our food, pausing only when some people had to stuff a tablecloth underneath it. Though the platter was more expensive and less generous than most of the Middle Eastern restaurants in the area, it did have a noticeable homemade quality that set it apart. The dressing on the fatoush salad had the buttery sweetness that emerges from the right proportions of lemon and olive oil, and the muhadarra, a mix of lentils, rice, and sautéed onions, was extremely flavorful, much better than many versions I’ve had at restaurants, which tend to be a bit dry. The saaj was different from baked pita, chewier and less bready (which is why the sajj at Fatoush made such good breakfast tacos).

I was too full to reap all the benefits of the dessert table, but I sampled a few bites of a Lebanese pudding flavored with almond and cinnamon and sprinkled with coconut flakes. I wish I could have tried the namoura (also called basbousa), a semolina cake soaked in sweet syrup that I discovered earlier this year at my birthday dinner at Waterfalls, but I might try to make it for an upcoming birthday to make up for this missed opportunity.

I passed by the festival later in the afternoon while doing errands, and it was still going strong. By then the bouncy houses were fully inflated and filled with children, and there was still plenty of food and drinks to occupy their parents for many more hours. I could sense a dance party coming on, since I’m sure everyone was drawn to the event, as I was, by the flyer’s promise of a “DJ ALL THREE DAYS.” I didn’t wait around to find out, but I think the block partied late into the evening.