Let’s Talk Lebanon: My Journey, My Mission & Why I Never Gave Up
I recently joined Alina Chedid for a long conversation on X Spaces. We spoke about Lebanon, food, travel, television, the Lebanese diaspora, NoGarlicNoOnions, Mechwar Bel Wadi, and a journey that has now occupied a major part of my life.
But underneath all these subjects was one simple question:
Why do I keep doing this?
After all these years, all these kilometers, thousands of meals, villages, kitchens, flights, early mornings and sleepless nights, why am I still carrying a camera and searching for another Lebanese story?
The answer is simple.
Because I believe Lebanon deserves to be seen differently.
Every Village in Lebanon Became My Village
I was born and raised in Beirut, in Achrafieh. I don’t really have a village to call my own.
During the war, however, we spent time outside Beirut, and I became attached to village life. Maybe that’s why, later in life, I started travelling so obsessively around Lebanon.
At some point, I stopped wishing I came from one particular village.
I decided that every Lebanese village would be my village.
From Akkar to the South, from the Bekaa to the mountains, the coast and the valleys, I wanted to understand this country beyond Beirut and beyond what I thought I already knew.
And I discovered that we Lebanese sometimes know surprisingly little about our own country.
There are people who know their hometown and its immediate surroundings but have never explored Akkar. Others have never really discovered Baalbek, the deep South, our valleys, monasteries, farms or remote mountain communities.
So I started with a simple idea:
Before asking the world to discover Lebanon, maybe we Lebanese should discover it ourselves.
From Dentistry to a Mission I Never Planned
I was a dentist for 13 years.
I didn’t wake up one morning with a business plan saying I was going to leave dentistry and become a food and travel creator.
Life opened doors.
I strongly believe that God opens doors along our journey. The important thing is noticing them and having the courage to walk through them.
Little by little, I began to feel that I had been given something bigger to do: show Lebanon in the most beautiful and truthful way I could.
Ask someone outside Lebanon what they know about our country and very often their answer is connected to the last piece of bad news they saw.
That bothered me.
Because that’s not the Lebanon I know.
Lebanon is its people. Its villages. Its food. Its mountains. Its snow. Its Mediterranean coast. Its four seasons. Its farmers and artisans. Its monasteries and old houses. Its bakeries. Its traditions. Its families sitting around a table.
It is a country that has survived extraordinary challenges and continues to wake up every morning.
I wanted to document that Lebanon.
Not by pretending its problems don’t exist, but by showing the enormous part of the story that rarely gets enough attention.
I Wanted People to Feel Lebanon, Not Simply Watch It
When I began filming, I didn’t want to create another food show.
Food was the door.
Behind that door were people.
Behind the people were villages, families, history, agriculture, craftsmanship, memories and traditions.
When I taste a tomato, break a piece of bread, listen to the crunch of an oven-baked dough or watch someone prepare mouneh, I’m not interested only in saying, “This is delicious.”
I want to understand why.
What flour was used? Where did the wheat come from? Why is this dough different? Why does this village prepare the dish this way? What does this woman know that her grandmother taught her? What happens if nobody documents her knowledge?
I learned by entering thousands of kitchens, visiting factories, meeting producers and travelling through dozens of countries.
And I am still learning.
My grandmother was an extraordinary cook. Every Sunday we would eat at her house, and I can still remember the flavors.
One of my regrets is that she left us before I understood the importance of documenting what she knew.
Maybe that also explains why I became obsessed with recording other people’s stories before they disappear.
Today, when I film an episode, I want someone watching at home to almost smell what I’m smelling and taste what I’m tasting.
I want a five-year-old and a 75-year-old to both find something in the same episode.
I don’t want you simply to watch the journey.
I want you to feel that you travelled with me.
The Lebanese Watching From Thousands of Kilometers Away
Eventually, the mission became much bigger than Lebanon itself.
I began meeting Lebanese around the world who told me they watched the videos because they couldn’t come home.
One encounter has stayed with me.
An older woman once stopped me late in the evening. She told me she couldn’t travel anymore and couldn’t get on airplanes.
She simply wanted to say thank you.
“Keep doing what you’re doing,” she told me. “I travel with you for free.”
Moments like that change everything.
I’ve met families abroad who gather to watch episodes together. Parents show their children villages they have never visited. People recognize streets where they grew up. Someone sees the bakery his father used to visit. Someone else hears the accent of her village.
The screen becomes a little window back home.
That is when I understood that these videos weren’t only tourism or entertainment.
They were becoming memory.
A Lebanese child can be born thousands of kilometers away and use these films to discover where his parents came from. Years later, he can watch them again and remember where he comes from.
That’s an enormous responsibility.
Discovering the Lebanese DNA Around the World
Travelling also taught me something fascinating about Lebanese identity.
I’ve met Lebanese descendants in Australia, Canada, Mexico and elsewhere who are several generations removed from Lebanon. Some don’t speak Arabic. Some have never visited Lebanon. Their appearance, language and daily life may have completely changed.
And yet you ask them:
“Where are you from?”
And somewhere in the answer is Lebanon.
While documenting the Lebanese community in Canada, I discovered stories of early emigrants who crossed oceans carrying very little.
Yet among the things some families preserved were the tools connected to their food traditions.
Think about what that means.
When you leave your country and can carry only a limited amount, what do you decide is important enough to take?
Food wasn’t simply food.
It was survival, memory and identity.
Generations later, families still gather around kibbeh and Lebanese dishes, even if those dishes have evolved along the way.
This is what I call the Lebanese DNA.
Sometimes you don’t even understand how strongly it exists until you return.
I’ve heard stories of Lebanese descendants landing in Lebanon for the first time, looking around at the people and suddenly becoming emotional.
They finally understood:
These people look like me. This place is somehow part of me.
Those stories keep me going whenever I am exhausted.
Why “NoGarlicNoOnions”?
And yes, during the conversation, the famous question came up again.
Why NoGarlicNoOnions?
The original explanation is much less complicated than people imagine.
I simply don’t eat garlic, and I have a strong intolerance to it. Onion also bothers me unless it is prepared in particular ways.
Years ago, whenever I went out with friends, they would joke:
“Anthony is coming. No garlic, no onions!”
The phrase stuck.
I didn’t sit in a branding meeting and invent it. It happened naturally.
What started as a joke became the name accompanying a journey around the world.
Ironically, all these years of travelling and learning about food have also made me appreciate how ingredients such as garlic and onion should be used. My point has never been that nobody should eat them. It is about understanding ingredients, respecting balance and knowing why something belongs in a recipe instead of adding it automatically.
Food deserves curiosity.
Why Lebanese Cuisine Is Extraordinary
Ask me about my favorite cuisine and my answer remains Lebanese.
Not simply because I’m Lebanese.
I genuinely believe we underestimate what we have.
Think about the Lebanese table.
We have the restaurant and celebration experience of the mezza, but we also have an enormous repertoire of home cooking that many visitors never encounter.
There are hundreds of preparations.
Then there is mouneh: labneh, kishk, zaatar, pickles, jams, preserves and generations of knowledge built around preparing for winter.
There is our bread.
Our manousheh.
Our cheeses.
Our vegetables and fruits.
Our olive oil.
Our arak.
Our home-cooked stews.
Our raw and cooked dishes.
Our sweets and ashta.
Our breakfast culture.
A properly stocked traditional Lebanese mountain home could historically depend on its mouneh for months.
That isn’t simply cuisine.
It’s an entire system of living.
And Lebanese food is naturally colorful and seasonal. Much of our traditional table is plant-based without anyone having needed to invent a fashionable label for it.
We grew up eating this way.
Sometimes you have to travel the world to understand the value of what was sitting on your grandmother’s table all along.
Protecting Lebanese Food Before We Lose Its Identity
One subject I care deeply about is protecting the identity of Lebanese products.
Around the world, certain foods and drinks are strongly associated with and protected by their places of origin. Lebanon needs to take the preservation and formal recognition of its culinary heritage seriously as well.
Because what happens when everybody can open something called a “Lebanese restaurant” while serving food that has almost nothing to do with Lebanon?
I’ve seen shawarma abroad transformed beyond recognition because the owner says, “That’s how people here like it.”
Cheese. Sauces. Ingredients we never traditionally used. Bigger portions. More toppings.
Of course restaurants need to make money and adapt to their markets.
But somewhere there has to be a line between adapting Lebanese food and losing Lebanese food.
I’ve also seen the opposite.
I’ve met restaurant owners abroad who politely tell customers, “Sorry, that’s not how we make it.”
I respect that enormously.
Because they aren’t only selling sandwiches.
They’re protecting a culture.
We have foods and traditions worth documenting and protecting: kishk, labneh, our cheeses, arak, manousheh, mouneh, regional sweets and dozens of products that remain closely connected to specific villages and communities.
We should know where they came from, how they’re made and why they matter.
Halawat El Shmayseh: A Little Treasure From Tripoli
During the Spaces conversation, someone asked me to highlight Halawat El Shmayseh, one of Tripoli’s distinctive sweets.
The timing was perfect.
I had just been filming it.
This is exactly the kind of story I love.
A sweet that people can live beside for years without knowing its history. A recipe connected to one city and a small number of craftsmen. Something completely ordinary to the people around it, yet extraordinary when you stop and look closely.
Tripoli alone could keep me filming for years.
And Lebanon is filled with similar discoveries.
That’s why I keep saying we must document these things now.
Not tomorrow.
How Five Minutes on Television Became Years of “Mechwar”
My television journey was another example of refusing to wait.
In 2014, I approached MTV with an idea.
I wanted airtime.
At first, the answer wasn’t encouraging. How would it work? How would it make money? Where would advertising fit?
I kept returning.
Again and again.
For months.
Eventually I was basically given five minutes on a Sunday.
Fine.
Give me five minutes.
I went out and filmed.
After the segment aired, people started asking where I had eaten and where these places were.
The five minutes became seven.
Seven became twelve.
Then twenty.
Eventually the format grew into half-hour television.
Later came the idea that evolved into Mechwar Bel Wadi.
The first episodes were incredibly simple. We walked, explored and filmed. I would return home and work on the editing myself at night.
Then the production grew.
A drone joined us. More cameras joined us. Shadi, Karim, Joan and others helped us make the images richer and the production stronger.
But the principle remained exactly the same.
Go somewhere. Discover it properly. Meet people. Listen. Learn. Document. Share.
I never wanted to sit around waiting for someone else to make the mission possible.
Waiting can kill an idea.
So we kept moving.
The Investment I Chose to Make in Lebanon
People sometimes assume that television itself is what finances these journeys.
The reality of my work has often been very different.
I have invested enormous time, energy and resources into producing content because I wanted it to exist and wanted people to see it.
For me, this has been my investment in Lebanon.
The return isn’t always financial.
Sometimes the return is an elderly woman telling me she travelled with me from her living room.
Sometimes it’s an Australian-born Lebanese telling me he finally visited his ancestral village.
Sometimes it’s helping a small bakery suddenly receive customers.
Sometimes it’s documenting an old woman making a recipe that might otherwise disappear with her.
How do you put a price on that?
Why I Remain Positive
People often ask me where the positivity comes from.
Lebanon has been through enough to make anyone tired.
My answer is that I choose to look at the half-full glass.
That doesn’t mean ignoring reality.
It means deciding what kind of energy I want to contribute to it.
I believe energy moves between people.
You can walk into a room and drain it, or you can walk into a room and leave something positive behind.
Every morning I try to ask myself:
What difference can I make today?
Some days begin at 4:30 in the morning. Some finish late at night. Many are exhausting.
But I can finish an incredibly long filming day and still think: What a beautiful day.
Because something was created.
Someone was documented.
A story was saved.
A place was shown.
I spent 17 years in the Scouts, and one principle stayed with me: leave the world a little better than you found it.
I think about that constantly.
Life is a passage.
We’re here temporarily.
So what are we leaving behind?
The Greatest Legacy I Can Leave My Children
I’ve thought about legacy many times.
I’m not sure the greatest thing I can leave my children is money or possessions.
I want to leave them something else:
the love and respect of people.
If someone meets one of my children years from now and says, “I knew your father. He did something good,” that means something to me.
That’s a legacy.
It also explains why I’ve generally tried to keep my work away from political fights and divisions.
My mission is elsewhere.
I want to gather.
I want to show.
I want to preserve.
I want people to smile.
The Dream Is Much Bigger Than NoGarlicNoOnions
So what comes next?
I have had many dreams over the years.
Lebanese street-food markets around the world.
Boxes bringing Lebanese mouneh into people’s homes.
Documentaries about the Lebanese diaspora.
More valleys.
More villages.
More forgotten traditions.
More Lebanese products reaching international audiences without losing their identity.
I dream of Lebanese ice cream being recognized internationally alongside gelato.
I dream of our manousheh receiving the respect we automatically give pizza.
Why shouldn’t a beautifully made manousheh be presented proudly to someone who isn’t Lebanese?
Why shouldn’t Lebanese breakfast become internationally understood?
Why shouldn’t kishk, mouneh, zaatar, arak and our regional cheeses be stories people around the world recognize?
And one of my biggest dreams remains taking the Lebanon we film to a truly global platform.
Not Anthony Rahayel.
Lebanon.
I want someone who has no Lebanese parents, no Lebanese friends and no connection whatsoever to our country to discover an episode and say:
“I need to visit this place.”
That is the next level of the mission.
Why I Never Gave Up
There are days when I’m tired.
There are moments when another flight feels impossible.
There are projects that don’t work.
Ideas that arrive too early.
Doors that remain closed.
And then something happens.
Someone sends me a message.
I meet a Lebanese family on the other side of the world.
A grandmother tells me her story.
A farmer takes me through his land.
A baker opens an oven.
Someone recognizes their childhood home in an episode.
A person who has never visited Lebanon tells me that my videos made them want to come.
And suddenly I remember why I’m doing it.
The mission isn’t finished.
Not even close.
There are thousands of stories still waiting.
Don’t Take Lebanon for Granted
If I could leave one message from this entire conversation, it would be this:
Don’t take Lebanon for granted.
We argue about everything.
Sometimes our differences become bigger than the things connecting us.
But underneath all of that is a land, a culture, a history, a table and an identity we share.
Our food gathers us.
Our villages reconnect us.
Our traditions remind us.
Our diaspora proves that Lebanon can survive inside people for generations, even thousands of kilometers away.
So let’s document it.
Let’s protect it.
Let’s celebrate it.
Let’s teach it to our children.
Let’s take what is beautiful about Lebanon and give it the value it deserves.
I will continue doing what I know how to do: travelling, filming, tasting, asking questions, meeting people and telling their stories.
With positivity, laughter, food, love and good energy.
There is still so much Lebanon left to discover.
And, God willing, the best days and the best stories are still ahead.
