Just like mama used to make

Naji Khairallah, owner of Fattoria del Sole (Factory of the Sun), Lebanon’s only producer of Italian cheese, prefers to preface the good news by recounting the bad. The story begins in 1997, when Khairallah, who had spent 30 years in Italy as an interior designer, and an Italian business associate were having dinner in a Beirut restaurant. “We asked for fresh mozzarella and the waiter brought us the yellow, imitation kind,” Khairallah recalled. “We thought: why don’t we set up a mozzarella factory here?” And so it came to pass. In its heyday, five years ago, Fattoria del Sole used to produce 20 different kinds of FORMAGGIO including MOZZARELLA, PROVOLONE, RICOTTA, and PECORINO. Khairallah employed 36 staff and turned over $50,000 to $55,000 a month. Then came disaster. Khairallah’s Italian partner was imprisoned for conning a Lebanese bank out of $1 million in bad checks. The factory had to close