Demonstrations

Jad Youssef - Lebani

Where:

Food Theatre - Outer Bailey

When:

12th September 2026
2:30 pm to 3:30 pm

In Lebnani, celebrated chef Jad Youssef invites readers to experience the warmth, generosity and depth of Lebanese food through authentic recipes passed down through generations of his family.

In this, his debut book, Jad returns to the recipes and stories that shaped his life in Beirut and beyond and celebrates Lebanese cooking as it is truly lived and eaten.

Lebnani brings together a collection of 84 authentic recipes, cooking from his own family's kitchen in Lebanon, and that feature on the menu of his award-winning restaurant, Lebnani, in Surrey. Here are the secret spice blends, time-honoured techniques, and the beloved dishes of his mother, aunts and grandparents that gather everyone around the table to feast family-style.

The book captures the flavour and rhythm of the everyday Lebanese table, with chapters that echo the meals and the occasions that bring people together: Lebanese Mornings. Mezza at Home, Classic Mezza, Tabkha (everyday meals), Mashawi (grills), Sandwiche (street wraps), Helweyet (sweets), Namlieh (the pantry).

Family stories are threaded throughout, tracing how food sustained Lebanese families through conflict and change. The daily rituals of shopping at souks, picking olives, baking bread and cooking together are woven into the national identity and resilience. There are memories of morning trips bringing back trays of freshly baked mana’eesh, the ritual of gathering wild za-atar and drying it under the sun, and how his mother's legendary Tabbouleh was devoured at big family celebrations.

The book combines specially commissioned food photography by Matt Russell alongside vintage photographs from the Youssef family archive and intoxicating travel images of the souks, falafel shops, mountain villages and coastal bakeries. The stunning images are matched with elegant book design, which comes together as a visual feast and a portrait of a country where food, memory and family life combine.

A cookbook with heart, Lebnani offers readers an honest account of one country's cooking: where every dish tells a story and every meal is about “gratitude, connection and honouring those who came before us.”