Mireille Hayek

1 · POSITION

Mireille Hayek belongs in the Luxury Hospitality Library as a culinary author, restaurateur and founder whose most important act was to turn the abundance of the Lebanese family table into a repeatable fine-dining hospitality system. Her contribution is not the invention of Lebanese food. It is the conversion of domestic culinary memory - generosity, many dishes, long tables, music, highly personal hosting and visual richness - into a branded restaurant format that could travel without presenting itself as an anonymous international luxury product.

2 · THE CLAIM

The strongest defensible claim is that Hayek made Lebanese home hospitality legible as luxury hospitality. Em Sherif did not become upscale by suppressing abundance or replacing familiar dishes with a foreign fine-dining grammar. It elevated the familiar through ingredient quality, choreography, atmosphere, service, design and consistency, then exported that combined experience across the Middle East and into Europe.

3 · CODE AND ANCHOR

The project register places Hayek at LHL-P-506, book P9-08-36, with the nomination note: Lebanon · Beirut · Em Sherif · Lebanese cooking as fine dining, exported. The clearest existing LHL anchor is LHL-S-481 · Em Sherif. The person card should explain authorship; the satellite should carry the detailed operating history of the Beirut house.

4 · A HOME COOK BEFORE A PROFESSIONAL KITCHEN

Hayek did not enter hospitality through culinary school or a classical hotel brigade. Contemporary profiles consistently describe her as a self-trained home cook whose family table preceded her restaurant career. This matters because the later Em Sherif proposition was not a chef imitating domestic food; it was a host translating her own domestic mode of hospitality into a public institution.

5 · THE HOUSEHOLD AS THE FIRST DINING ROOM

The recurring origin story is simple: Hayek cooked for family and friends, hosted generously and was encouraged to open a restaurant. In later interviews she continued to describe the restaurant as an extension of the house rather than a separate commercial persona. The continuity between home and restaurant is therefore evidence, not branding copy invented after success.

6 · 2006 - LA PARILLA

Before Em Sherif, Hayek opened La Parilla in Beirut in 2006. The World's 50 Best and Hospitality News both record it as her first restaurant. The precursor is important because it proves that Em Sherif was not a spontaneous first attempt. Hayek had already tested herself as a restaurateur before returning more explicitly to Lebanese cuisine.

7 · 2009 - YASMINA

A second restaurant concept followed in 2009 and was named Yasmina after her daughter. Public sources describe it as an Indian-fusion concept. In the arc of the biography it is useful because it shows Hayek experimenting beyond Lebanese food before making the decisive move back toward the cuisine she knew most intimately.

8 · 2011 - EM SHERIF

Em Sherif opened in Beirut in 2011, in Ashrafieh / Monot. The name means the mother of Sherif and refers to Hayek's son. Unlike an invented luxury name, it identifies the restaurant through kinship. The founder did not hide the domestic origin; she put it on the door.

9 · THE NAME AS POSITIONING

Calling a fine-dining restaurant 'Em Sherif' made motherhood, household identity and family memory part of the brand. That choice is central to the model. The restaurant's authority does not come from distance between chef and guest. It comes from an intensified version of closeness: the guest is invited into a public rendering of a private Lebanese table.

10 · NO CONVENTIONAL MENU

Early profiles describe the flagship through a large sequence of dishes rather than a conventional choose-one-course structure. The World's 50 Best later characterised it as a feast of thirty-plus dishes designed for sharing. This matters operationally: abundance is not an accidental portioning style but part of the guest journey.

11 · ABUNDANCE AS LUXURY

European fine dining often signals luxury through reduction: fewer objects, smaller portions, silence, distance and controlled scarcity. Em Sherif uses a different grammar. Luxury appears as excess of care, repeated service, many plates, long duration, visual density and the feeling that the host would rather serve too much than too little. That is a culturally specific hospitality language.

12 · KARAM

The World's 50 Best's 2023 Art of Hospitality feature begins with the Arabic idea of karam - generosity - and uses Em Sherif as a contemporary expression of it. Hayek's authored act is therefore best understood not simply as a menu but as the organisation of generosity into a repeatable service system.

13 · THE ROOM

Hayek also treated the room as part of the authorship. Hospitality News records an architect describing the first branch as originally designed by Hayek, who wanted it to feel like a traditional Lebanese house. Later franchise designs were tasked with translating the spirit rather than cloning one interior. This makes her spatial role unusually direct for a restaurateur.

14 · THE LEBANESE HOUSE AS REFERENCE

The original design logic used the Lebanese house not as museum reconstruction but as emotional reference: colour, textiles, ornament, furniture, art, lighting, flowers, music and the density of objects helped create the sensation of entering someone's home for a celebration. The visual language supported the same proposition as the menu.

15 · A HOUSE, NOT A THEME

The distinction is important. A themed restaurant applies symbols to create recognisable scenery. Hayek's model begins with remembered domestic behaviour - how guests are seated, how food arrives, how long people stay, how music and conversation coexist - and then builds the visual environment around that behaviour. The symbolism follows the social act.

16 · THE SET MENU AS HOST CONTROL

A fixed or strongly choreographed feast changes the power relationship between diner and restaurant. Instead of the guest constructing a meal from a list, the house assumes the role of host and decides what should arrive. This makes the restaurant behave more like a generous home table, where hospitality is expressed through what the host chooses to bring.

17 · MANY DISHES, ONE EXPERIENCE

The individual dishes remain important, but the product is the accumulation. Mezze, salads, grills, daily dishes and sweets form a sequence whose effect depends on volume and rhythm. Em Sherif's innovation is therefore not a signature plate in the conventional chef-brand sense. It is an experience made from the orchestration of many familiar forms.

18 · AUTHENTICITY WITHOUT STASIS

Hayek has repeatedly described authenticity as central, but her public comments do not equate authenticity with freezing cuisine. She has defended experimentation and the right of chefs to add a touch of their own. That distinction later becomes essential when her daughter Yasmina joins the business with formal European culinary training.

19 · THE FOUNDER AS MARKET SENSOR

Yasmina Hayek has described her mother's strength as knowledge of the market, Lebanese culinary techniques and the scene itself. Mireille's authorship is therefore not only recipe memory. It includes knowing what local guests recognise, what they consider generous, where refinement becomes alienating and which details can change without breaking trust.

20 · PRESENCE

In interviews Mireille repeatedly returns to presence: supervising from A to Z, listening to customers, checking detail and treating every day as if it were the first. This is not romantic language about a founder standing in a dining room. It identifies the operational problem that international expansion later had to solve: how to reproduce the founder's judgement when she cannot physically be everywhere.

21 · THE CLIENT AS PARTICIPANT

Hayek describes customers as contributors to the restaurant's improvement. This is consistent with a household hospitality model in which the host observes whether the guest is eating, comfortable and engaged. The commercial restaurant formalises the feedback loop, but the social logic remains recognisable.

22 · 2016 - EM SHERIF CAFE

By the middle of the decade, the brand expanded into Em Sherif Café. Contemporary reporting describes the Beirut café as an all-day, more relaxed version of the family proposition. This was the first proof that the Em Sherif identity could survive outside the long formal feast.

23 · THE CAFE TEST

A café requires different rhythms: breakfast, lunch, dinner, shorter stays, repeat local use and a broader range of occasions. The concept therefore tested which parts of Em Sherif were essential. The answer was not the exact set-menu format. The transferable elements were Lebanese flavour, family warmth, design coherence, service and sociability.

24 · SEA CAFE

Em Sherif Sea Café created another variation around Lebanese-Mediterranean seafood. The concept later travelled to Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. Its significance is structural: the group learned to create related but distinct formats rather than forcing one flagship restaurant into every market.

25 · THE MEDITERRANEAN EDGE

Sea Café also makes visible a part of Lebanese identity sometimes flattened in international restaurant branding. Lebanon is both Levantine and Mediterranean. By focusing on seafood, olive oil, vegetables, mezze and coastal conviviality, the concept widened the culinary map without abandoning the parent house.

26 · DELI

The newest major format, Em Sherif Deli, translated the brand into ready-to-eat, breakfast, sandwiches, beverages, pantry products and all-day use. The first Deli opened at Harrods in London in 2022, followed by Beirut. This is the furthest move from the ceremonial flagship and therefore a strong test of brand elasticity.

27 · FROM FEAST TO EVERYDAY

Restaurant, Café, Sea Café and Deli form a useful ladder. The flagship is ceremonial; the café is habitual; Sea Café is specialised and social; the Deli is convenient and portable. The portfolio shows that Hayek's household idea was not tied to one service format. It could be decomposed into different guest occasions.

28 · THE FAMILY COMPANY

The official Em Sherif site identifies Mireille Hayek as Founder & Chef, Dani Chakour as Founder & CEO and Yasmina Hayek as Executive Chef. The company should therefore be read as a family enterprise with differentiated authorship, not as a one-person empire. Mireille is the originating culinary and hospitality author, but she is not the sole creator of the organisation's later scale.

29 · DANI CHAKOUR

Dani Chakour's role is especially important in the corporate history. The official company presents him as founder and chief executive, while trade interviews quote him on franchising, brand equity and quality control. LHL should consider him as a People candidate if the Em Sherif Group receives its own corporate entry, because franchising and operating-system authorship are not the same as Mireille's culinary authorship.

30 · YASMINA HAYEK

Yasmina Hayek requires separate treatment. She trained at Institut Paul Bocuse and worked in high-level European kitchens before becoming executive chef of the family group. By the 2020s she was leading menu evolution, training, openings and international adaptation. She is not merely the daughter who inherited the kitchen; she is a second-generation culinary author whose work should receive its own People card.

31 · MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

The productive tension between Mireille and Yasmina is central to the mature brand. Mireille brings market memory, domestic techniques and the original emotional code; Yasmina brings formal culinary technique, design education and experience from Michelin-starred kitchens. Their later work is strongest when credited as collaboration rather than collapsed into either generation.

32 · THE HANDOVER IS NOT A REPLACEMENT

Yasmina's increasing visibility does not erase Mireille's authorship, and Mireille's founder status should not absorb Yasmina's work. The distinction is chronological and functional: Mireille created the house and its hospitality grammar; Yasmina became the principal culinary interpreter extending that grammar into new markets and formats.

33 · FRANCHISING

Em Sherif expanded substantially through franchise and partnership structures. Trade publications show formal franchise fees, operating manuals, training and multi-concept rights. This is the point at which a founder's sensibility becomes an operating system. The challenge is no longer to make one excellent restaurant but to specify what another operator must reproduce.

34 · QUALITY CONTROL

A Saudi franchisee interviewed by Hospitality News described the franchisor as extremely sensitive to food quality, taste and authenticity and referred to detailed construction, operations and management manuals plus training support. That outside testimony is valuable because it shows the brand was not scaling only through logo licensing.

35 · WHAT IS ACTUALLY REPLICATED

A franchise cannot replicate a person's childhood or family table. It can replicate procurement standards, recipes, service sequences, training, visual codes, music, plateware, layout principles and the requirement for abundance. The success of Em Sherif depends on making those proxies convincing enough that the guest still reads the result as personal hospitality.

36 · THE RISK OF THE COPY

International expansion creates a contradiction. The more a restaurant built on intimacy and home feeling scales, the greater the risk that it becomes generic. Hayek's own language around presence, authenticity and consistency can be read as an answer to that contradiction: scale is acceptable only if the guest still experiences a recognisable host.

37 · THE BRAND AS CULTURAL EXPORT

The project register's phrase 'Lebanese cooking as fine dining, exported' is accurate but incomplete. What travelled was not only cooking. Decor, music, service manner, abundance and social tempo travelled with it. The export was a cultural hospitality package.

38 · KUWAIT, DOHA, RIYADH, DUBAI AND BEYOND

By the early 2020s Em Sherif had spread through major Middle Eastern cities. The World's 50 Best and trade sources record outposts in Kuwait, Riyadh, Doha, Damascus, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Amman, Manama and elsewhere. Exact counts changed quickly and should be dated rather than treated as a timeless portfolio figure.

39 · LONDON

Harrods gave the brand an unusually symbolic European platform. The London restaurant is described by Harrods as Em Sherif's first European restaurant and explicitly credits Mireille as chef patron. A Lebanese brand did not enter Europe through a marginal ethnic-food district; it entered one of the world's best-known luxury department stores.

40 · HARRODS AS LUXURY VALIDATION

The importance of Harrods is not that department-store dining is inherently superior. It is that the placement positioned Lebanese food inside an established luxury retail ecosystem alongside global fashion and gastronomy. The move made the brand's claim visible to an audience that might previously have treated Lebanese cuisine primarily as casual or family food.

41 · MONACO

In 2022 Em Sherif opened at Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo. The setting matters even more than geographic expansion: a Lebanese restaurant was inserted into the dining ecosystem of one of Europe's archetypal grand hotels, beside institutions such as Le Louis XV and Le Grill. The Michelin Guide continues to list Em Sherif at the Hôtel de Paris.

42 · MONACO AS TRANSLATION

The Monaco restaurant could not simply transplant Beirut unchanged. The National reported the team adapting recipes, sourcing and heat levels for the European context. The key test was whether adaptation could occur without dissolving the identity. That is the difference between export and imitation.

43 · THE HOTEL PLATFORM

Em Sherif's move into Hôtel de Paris and Rosewood Abu Dhabi also changes its relationship to hotels. Instead of being only an independent restaurant group, it becomes a restaurant brand that luxury hotels use as part of their own F&B proposition. Hospitality authorship crosses institutional boundaries.

44 · ROSEWOOD ABU DHABI

Em Sherif Sea Café at Rosewood Abu Dhabi became the first of that concept in the UAE. Rosewood continues to present it as one of the hotel's dining venues, with lunch, dinner, music and shisha. The hotel context confirms that Em Sherif's identity can function inside another luxury house without losing its own name. This hotel integration is strategically important. A strong restaurant brand inside a luxury hotel must satisfy two identities simultaneously: the restaurant's repeat customers and the hotel's guests. Em Sherif's expansion shows that Lebanese hospitality itself became valuable enough to operate as a named attraction within established hotel ecosystems.

45 · THE EXPERIENCE BEYOND FOOD

Hayek has repeatedly argued that Em Sherif is not only food. Her formula includes what guests touch, see, taste and feel. The World's 50 Best similarly describes music, decor, service and cuisine as one experience. This is why the founder belongs in a hospitality library rather than only a culinary dictionary.

46 · MUSIC

Live Arabic music is part of the flagship's sensory identity. It increases theatricality but also changes the social behaviour of the room: meals become celebrations rather than silent tastings. In the Em Sherif model, luxury is convivial and audible.

47 · DECOR

The visual density of the Beirut flagship - chandeliers, textiles, saturated colour and decorative detail - resists the international minimalist template that dominated many luxury restaurants. The room asserts that refinement can be ornate, domestic and culturally specific.

48 · SERVICE

The 2023 Art of Hospitality Award is significant because it recognised the part of Em Sherif that is easiest to overlook when discussing its food. The award framed the restaurant as a service institution built around warmth, listening, loyalty and an ability to make guests feel known.

49 · THE ART OF HOSPITALITY AWARD

Em Sherif received the Middle East & North Africa's 50 Best Restaurants Art of Hospitality Award in 2023. Mireille and Yasmina accepted it together. The award is useful evidence not as a trophy count but because the judging body identified the restaurant's hospitality itself - not only its cuisine - as distinctive.

50 · RANKINGS

Em Sherif Beirut has remained on the MENA's 50 Best list across multiple editions and is ranked No. 13 in the 2026 list. Rankings fluctuate and should not be treated as permanent quality scores. Their value here is longitudinal: the flagship remained regionally visible while the group expanded.

51 · THE DAILY DISH

The current 50 Best profile highlights a changing daily dish based on local and seasonal produce. This is important because a global brand can easily become a fixed export menu. Retaining a daily local component keeps the flagship connected to Lebanese seasonality rather than functioning only as a catalogue of permanent signatures.

52 · HUMMUS AND LABOUR

Yasmina has pointed to the labour hidden inside apparently simple Lebanese classics, including the long preparation of the group's hummus. The observation supports Mireille's original project: luxury can be found by intensifying care around familiar food rather than replacing familiar food with rarer cuisine.

53 · LEBANESE FOOD AS FINE DINING

Em Sherif's broader cultural effect is that it helped move Lebanese cuisine into spaces and price categories where diners expected fine-dining service, elaborate interiors and international luxury standards. The restaurant did not need to become French, Japanese or tasting-menu driven to claim that category.

54 · NOT THE FIRST LUXURY LEBANESE RESTAURANT

The Library should avoid a false first. Fine Lebanese restaurants existed before 2011 in Lebanon and abroad, and grand hotels had served refined Lebanese food for decades. Hayek's significance is not chronological invention. It is the strength and exportability of a particular family-authored model.

55 · THE WOMAN FOUNDER

Hayek also became a visible female founder in a regional restaurant industry where ownership, kitchens and executive leadership have often been male-dominated. The World's 50 Best included Em Sherif among female-led restaurants to watch. This is contextual significance, not the reason for admission: the authored hospitality model remains the test.

56 · BEIRUT

The original house is inseparable from Beirut. Its glamour, instability, appetite, sociability and habit of mixing domestic life with public life all sit behind the Em Sherif proposition. International branches export an idea of Lebanon that is celebratory rather than crisis-defined.

57 · BEIRUT MON AMOUR

The later group explicitly used 'Beirut Mon Amour' as a declaration across its restaurants. The phrase helps explain the emotional function of expansion: each foreign branch is meant to operate as an embassy of the founder's Beirut rather than as a neutral chain unit.

58 · WAR, CRISIS AND CONTINUITY

Lebanese hospitality businesses have operated through political crisis, economic collapse, the Beirut port explosion and regional instability. Em Sherif's continued international growth during that period gave the brand a second role: it became a vehicle through which a Lebanese hospitality identity could remain commercially visible even when the home market was under severe pressure.

59 · THE DIASPORA EFFECT

Expansion also benefits from a large Lebanese and Levantine diaspora already familiar with the cuisine and with the emotional meaning of the table. The brand can therefore serve two audiences at once: guests seeking recognition and guests seeking discovery. That dual function is powerful in London, Monaco and Gulf cities.

60 · LOCALISATION

A successful international branch cannot depend entirely on nostalgia. Monaco, London, Oman and the Gulf require different sourcing, regulations, service expectations and customer preferences. The group has responded through local adaptation while keeping a stable core. That balance is one of the central operating achievements of the mature Em Sherif system.

61 · WHAT REMAINS FIXED

Across formats and countries, the fixed core appears to be Lebanese identity, generosity, shared food, strong visual atmosphere, attentive service and family authorship. Exact dishes and service details can move around those constants. This is the brand architecture beneath the menu. The elements allowed to change include format, meal occasion, seafood emphasis, degree of formality, local ingredients, specific dishes and some interior interpretation. The ability to distinguish fixed identity from adaptable expression is what permits a hospitality brand to scale without requiring exact replication.

62 · FROM PERSONAL HOST TO INSTITUTION

The arc of Hayek's career is therefore a familiar but difficult hospitality transition: private host, restaurateur, brand founder, multi-concept author, franchisor and cultural exporter. Each stage requires surrendering some personal control while finding mechanisms that preserve the original judgement.

63 · MIREILLE'S AUTHORED LAYER

The part that should remain attached specifically to Mireille is the originating layer: the return to Lebanese cuisine, the Em Sherif name, the house-like interior, the abundance model, the founder-host stance and the decision to present Lebanese domestic hospitality as luxury rather than disguise it.

64 · YASMINA'S AUTHORED LAYER

The later culinary evolution, formal chef leadership, many international openings, European adaptations and new-generation menu work increasingly belong to Yasmina. LHL should credit them separately once her card is issued. This protects both women from the flattening effect of a family-brand narrative.

65 · DANI'S AUTHORED LAYER

The corporate platform, franchise model, partner selection and quality-control architecture involve Dani Chakour and the wider management team. Those functions deserve their own corporate history. Mireille's card should not become a substitute for an eventual Em Sherif Group entry.

66 · THE HOUSE AND THE PERSON

LHL-S-481 · Em Sherif should carry the Beirut house: opening, room, menu, service evolution, chefs, rankings and operating history. LHL-P-506 should answer a narrower question: what did Mireille Hayek author that made the house and later brand distinctive? The answer is the conversion of Lebanese home generosity into a luxury hospitality grammar.

67 · RECOMMENDATION - EM SHERIF GROUP

The current register has the Em Sherif restaurant satellite but no separate Em Sherif Group corporate / brand row in the supplied queue. The group now operates multiple concepts across multiple countries and should be considered for a dedicated entry so that ownership, franchising, portfolio growth and partnerships do not overload either the person card or the Beirut restaurant satellite.

68 · RECOMMENDATION - YASMINA HAYEK

Yasmina Hayek is a strong People candidate under Chefs, Bartenders & Culinary Authors. Her formal training, European kitchen experience, executive-chef role, international menu adaptation, 2025 MENA Best Female Chef recognition and leadership of the next-generation culinary programme are sufficient for a card independent of her mother.

69 · RECOMMENDATION - DANI CHAKOUR

Dani Chakour is a People candidate if the Library wants to document the business authorship behind Em Sherif's franchising and international operating system. The official site calls him Founder & CEO. His role should be researched separately rather than inferred from Mireille's profile.

70 · COMPARISON - KAMAL MOUZAWAK

Kamal Mouzawak and Mireille Hayek represent two different Lebanese responses to culinary memory. Mouzawak decentralised authorship toward farmers and village cooks; Hayek concentrated it into a house and family brand. Tawlet makes the cook visible as the bearer of regional memory. Em Sherif makes the host-family visible as the bearer of national hospitality.

71 · COMPARISON - BASMA ELKHEREIJI

Basma Elkhereiji's Social Kitchen begins with contemporary urban sociability and develops into a concept-development system. Hayek begins with domestic culinary memory and develops into an international family brand. Both show that local authorship can compete with imported restaurant concepts without copying them.

72 · COMPARISON - HADEEL ALMOTAWA

Hadeel Almotawa's Takya approaches national cuisine through research across Saudi regions and a contemporary restaurant lens. Hayek's Em Sherif begins from lived household practice rather than an explicit research programme. Both prove that a national cuisine can enter premium hospitality without surrendering its identity.

73 · COMPARISON - BEATRICE TOLLMAN

There is also a useful hospitality parallel with Beatrice Tollman: a woman whose personal cooking, hosting instincts and family authorship became embedded in a multi-property luxury business. The industries differ, but both records ask the same question - how can intimate household hospitality survive institutional scale?

74 · TIMELINE

2006 - Mireille Hayek opens La Parilla in Beirut. 2009 - opens a second concept, Yasmina. 2011 - Em Sherif opens in Ashrafieh / Monot, Beirut. Mid-2010s - Em Sherif Café expands the brand into all-day dining. Late 2010s - Sea Café develops as a seafood-led concept; regional franchising accelerates. 2021 - Harrods announces Em Sherif for London. 2022 - the brand establishes a European presence at Harrods and Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo; Em Sherif Sea Café opens at Rosewood Abu Dhabi. 2023 - Em Sherif Beirut receives MENA's 50 Best Art of Hospitality Award. 2024-25 - Yasmina's executive-chef authorship becomes increasingly visible; the group reaches roughly two dozen outlets across four concepts. 2026 - Em Sherif Beirut ranks No. 13 in MENA's 50 Best Restaurants; the family group remains active across MENA and Europe.

75 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ Public sources disagree on the exact founding years of some sub-concepts: trade lists give different dates for Em Sherif Café and Sea Café. This master uses only the flagship's well-supported 2011 date and treats later format dates cautiously. ⚑ Mireille Hayek is the originating founder and culinary author, but the official company also names Dani Chakour as Founder & CEO; later group scale must not be attributed to Mireille alone. ⚑ Yasmina Hayek's role is substantial and increasingly independent. International menu development, formal chef leadership and many later openings should not be back-attributed to Mireille. ⚑ Early interviews call Mireille self-trained; this is not evidence that she lacked professional skill, only that she did not follow a classical culinary-school route. ⚑ Outlet counts change rapidly and include a mixture of directly operated, franchised and partner-run locations; figures are dated where used and not treated as current constants. ⚑ Rankings and awards are evidence of recognition, not objective proof of superiority. ⚑ The Library does not claim that Em Sherif was the first fine-dining Lebanese restaurant. Its significance is the authored model and its exportability.

76 · CONCLUSION

Mireille Hayek's contribution can be reduced to a deceptively simple move: she refused to treat the Lebanese family table as something that had to be cleaned up, minimised or translated into another culinary language before it could become luxury. She amplified its abundance, gave it a room, service choreography and brand, then built mechanisms that allowed the feeling to travel. Em Sherif's finest achievement is not that Lebanese food entered expensive dining rooms. It is that a specifically Lebanese idea of what it means to host someone became the expensive dining room. That is the authored act LHL-P-506 should preserve.