Sands Restaurant

Will Lebanese cuisine ever sweep Britain in the same way that other eastern cuisines have done? Nobody knows of course, but if those who run Sands have their way it won't be for lack of trying. It's not just that they want you to eat there and enjoy yourself, they'd like to convert you as well. So once a month they stage what is effectively a Lebanese Familiarisation night, complete with food, drink and belly dancing, though quite how the Lebanese themselves resolve the question of belly dancing on a full stomach is not for me to answer. What it does do is to enable the innocent to sample a typical Lebanese meal which comes in the form of two sets of starters, a main course and the dessert, with coffee, usually very black and sweet to the point of excess.

Typical dishes are jawanih bil toom, grilled chicken wings in garlic and coriander sauce, sujiq, mildy hot and spiced Armenian sausages, and a sort of mixed grill of lamb cubes, minced lamb and cubes of chicken served with grilled onions, tomatoes and green peppers. Lebanese food is fun, it's tasty, relatively simple to prepare and I just have a sneaking feeling that we could be looking at the next populist UK imported cuisine here.