Quickly, I found the absolutely perfect space not far from our apartment: an early 20th century traditional Lebanese apartment, complete with beautiful tile floors (a different pattern in each room) and an enormous sun-filled terrace overlooking the narrow residential street below. The open configuration allowed me to have one big kitchen to house all my equipment with a mammoth island worktop for teaching groups and a separate dining room. I spent hours in Basta, the antiques district, bargaining for cane seated café chairs and mid-century light fixtures and a vintage dining table. While I scrubbed things clean, on the balconies directly across from me, little old ladies rested on their elbows watching the busy street below, curiously eyeing my progress, waving hello and smiling. One sweet lady sent over a plant as a housewarming gift. To it I added a lemon tree, an olive tree, a pomegranate tree, a fig tree and lots and lots of herbs. I wanted my own little piece of the Mediterranean on my terrace.

What I hadn’t bargained for when I signed for the space, was the little furn, a bakery storefront directly beneath my kitchen. Furn literally translates to oven and whenever I arrived to begin my day, the intoxicating smell of baking dough followed me up the four flights of stairs to my atelier, wafting in through my gaping, wonky window frames. Furn Michel was its name, I learned, or Michel’s Oven. Michel himself is a middle aged, baseball cap, disposable white plastic apron-wearing proprietor.  He shuffles the orders, orchestrating the operation from his counter. The room he and his cohorts operate from has all the charm of the DMV, still the lines are long for the man’oushe pumped out of the little gas fired terracotta oven in the corner.

Man’oushe is a breakfast and lunch staple in Lebanon. Much like you see New Yorkers desperately clinging to lox and cream cheese stuffed bagels as they head to work, Beirutis are munching on a folded half moon of crispy dough with different toppings wrapped in white paper as they begin their days. The plate-sized dough is most often simply smeared with a mixture of zaatar spices and olive oil. To that you can add cheese or ask for cocktail, half cheese, half zaatar or my personal favorite, lahmabajeen, finely minced meat with tomatoes, pomegranate molasses, and chilli topping. After baking you can ask for khodra which means mint and tomatoes and cucumbers and chilis are added before it’s rolled or folded up to take with you. 

Furns or ovens, are a dime a dozen. Every village, in fact every neighborhood has their own space for gathering in the morning to retrieve a man'oushe piping hot from the oven.  Tall thin chimneys still poke up from between buildings in crowded cities, hinting at what delicacies are being baked below, and their followings are dedicated. From what I’ve seen customers rarely deviate from their preferred furn and its owner. Of course, there's the bakery that you stop at on the highway on your way to the beach on Saturday morning, grab a bag of assorted man'oushe to soak up your hangover from the night before before toasting yourself in the sun all day. And there's the little furn in a beautiful Druze village of Mokhtarda, high up in the Chouf Mountains where you fortify yourself before a hike in the Cedars. Occasionally there’s a furn worth traveling for.  One of those is a little place in the seaside village of Amchit, halfway between Byblos and Batroun, run by the women of the Zgheib family called Furn el Sabaya. Three sisters opened it 28 years ago and quite literally it translates to "The Young Women's Oven." The ladies' most famous specialty, a dessert particular to Amchit called Mwarka is a sweet snail shaped pastry filled with chopped almonds, walnuts, sugar, rose and orange blossom waters. I can taste it in my mind as I write this. Then there's The Lebanese Bakery with its slick branding and branches in London, Egypt, and the Gulf. Ichkhanian Bakery has been putting an Armenian twist on baked goods for over 70 years in Beirut and I think Anthony Bourdain paid them a visit when he was in town. But mostly you are devoted to your neighborhood bakery where they know your order before you say it and you can have a friendly chat with your neighbors as you eagerly await your mid-morning treat.

Part of the charm of Lebanon is that I was quickly absorbed into the story, became a character of Moumneh Street. Proprietor Michel has three younger men who work for him, including the impressively moustachioed motorcycle delivery guy who enthusiastically waved and shouted my name from his bike whenever he saw me walking in the neighborhood. Ahmad, whose job it is to roll out each individual man’oushe on a machine like a giant pasta roller was more reserved, politely asking how I was, and was always quick to help me lug my groceries up the four long floors to my kitchen. And finally, Mohammad, a chubby guy from Palestine originally, father of 9, who jokingly asked me if I’d take at least a couple of his kids. He was keeper of the oven, flicking the man’oushe off his metal peel and into the hot tiled cavern. There was a chorus greetings, Bonjour Sally! Keifik?” with arms waving enthusiastically as I came and went each day.

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