Beyond Barbar

On the corner facing Barbar’s large and always busy outlet on Hamra’s Piccadilly Street is Beit Halab, an unassuming, modestly sized venue which opened three months ago. Like Barbar, it has a variety of meats on display, ready to be grilled for sandwiches. Unlike Barbar, which is almost always packed, there is only a trickle of customers around Beit Halab. Yet Musaab El Hadri, the Syrian owner of Beit Halab, believes that, given a year, his restaurant will be giving Barbar a serious run for its money. Moving to Beirut  Before the war, El Hadri taught education at one of Aleppo’s universities and was a manager at one of the city’s well known restaurants, the biggest in Aleppo, according to him. With the onset of the war and the gradual worsening of the situation, El Hadri decided to move his family to Beirut and start his own restaurant here with