17 September 2011

BEIRUT: Something is afoot in Beirut. On the one hand the city expands daily in a blur of corporatism and consumerism – especially in its dining options. Have you ever played the game “Name the restaurant chain you can’t find in Beirut?” It’s not easy.

Yet on the other hand, something altogether different is taking shape.There appears to be a growing interest in independent, home-cooked, environmentally friendly food, as evidenced by a variety of small-scale initiatives popping up about the city. The latest enterprise of this nature is Plat du Jour, a simple Mar Mikhail-based business venture that seeks to marry hearty international cuisine with affordability and convenience for the working world.

Founded by Richard Bampfylde, an Englishman who moved to Beirut two years ago, Plat du Jour is building up to be more or less what its name implies – a different daily home-cooked lunchtime dish delivered to your doorstep for just LL10,000.

The small business has been launched solely as a Friday project initially but already customers are calling for it to be expanded to every day of the week. As Bampfylde explains, “With a growing customer base and increasing demand the business will no doubt move to daily. For now, we’re doing a sort of ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ thing.”

For an Englishman, that means one thing – fish and chips. But not just any old fish and chips will do. Plat du Jour’s fish is sourced locally and fried in a homemade beer-based batter, while the chips it offers are delicious, rustic specimens cut from thick Lebanese potatoes.

“As far as possible all the produce we use is local,” Bampfylde says. “That’s important – both investing in our local community and cutting down on unnecessary transportation costs and environmental effects. We have a low carbon footprint.”

Plat du Jour emphasizes environmental consciousness by offering customers the option of a “green” discount of 25 percent if one returns the containers in which the food is delivered to be reused.

“The 25 percent discount amounts to more than the cost of replacing the container, but we’re offering it to encourage others to consider the environment too,” Bampfylde says.

As for the product, each portion of fish and chips is wrapped, as is traditional, in newspaper, packaged in a brown paper bag together a piece of fruit or a desert and ferried promptly on the back of Bampfylde’s Vespa to the customer.

“[It’s] proving very popular,” he says, pointing out that high quality English-style fish and chips just isn’t available elsewhere in Lebanon, at least not at such an affordable price.

However, he also realizes that fish and chips may not be everyone’s ideal lunch, so Plat du Jour is offering one other international dish each Friday as well. So far, such diverse alternatives have been Doro Wat, a spicy, Ethiopian chicken and rice plate, a fish curry and a Chinese platter.

Simplicity is key to concept of plat du jour, a daily dish, nor jargon and no frills at all.

“It’s simple,” he says, “We don’t need to be on Facebook, we don’t need to be on Twitter; there’s a number, you dial it.” When you get through you’ll be told what the plat du jour is, it’ll cost LL10,000 and it’ll be delivered directly to your doorstep.

Plat du Jour is, Bampfylde adds, “ideal for anyone, but particularly suitable for the office market.” He targets mainly those workers in need of a good lunch or an early dinner.

“What would you choose: A sandwich or a home-cooked meal with desert for 10,000?” he asks. Considering the role his embryonic initiative may play in the evolution of socially conscious enterprises in Beirut, Bampfylde says: “There is a new movement [in Beirut].

“It hasn’t started with us, but it’s started, and you can feel it; it’s in the psyche. Hopefully there will be more to come. Maybe it will move from more of a grassroots thing into more of a mainstream ideology. We’re definitely a part of it.”

Plat du Jour is currently available for delivery anywhere in the Beirut area Fridays only. Orders may be placed between 12:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. by calling 71-657-008. Each meal costs LL10,000 (or less with 25 percent environmental discount).

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.