Villa Clara The Kitchen: Beirut's Art of Return

From Byblos to Mar Mikhaël to Leros, Olivier Gougeon and Marie-Hélène Moawad bring their beloved Villa Clara home with a menu of French classics, Italian gems, and Lebanese flourishes in Saifi Village.

The first time I encountered Olivier Gougeon, he was ladling out boeuf bourguignon in Byblos, as if Burgundy had decamped to the Levant for a season. It was French cooking without pretension—no white-gloved fuss, just sauce dark as mahogany and meat so yielding you could have eaten it with a spoon. That was the opening chapter of what has become, for me at least, a long-distance love affair with Villa Clara.

When Villa Clara re-emerged as a boutique hotel in Mar Mikhaël, it was everything Beirut needed and everything you suspected it might destroy. A 1920s villa filled with laughter, zinc bar gleaming, kitchen door swinging, Marie-Hélène Moawad tending to guests with the natural ease of someone who considers hospitality less a profession than a form of kinship. Then came the blast, and Villa Clara was left broken, as was half the city. Beirut has a way of testing even its most stubborn romantics.

And yet, like most good French sagas, there was an island interlude. Villa Clara Leros, in the Aegean, opened its shutters, and I followed along through Instagram squares—sun-bleached courtyards, plates perfumed with oregano and lemon, the kind of images that trick you into thinking Wi-Fi carries scent. Every summer, I swore to Marie-Hélène I'd visit. Every summer, I broke that promise. One day, I still will. It's on the bucket list, and I've inked it in bold.

Which brings us to April 2024. A city still limping, still rebuilding, and then—like a familiar song drifting down the stairs—news broke: Villa Clara Beirut was back. Not as a villa this time, but as something more stripped back and, dare I say, more essential. The Kitchen came first, followed by Le Comptoir. Two small rooms in Saifi Village. Eighteen seats in the dining room, twenty at the bar. Intimacy over scale, precision over pomp. If the original Villa Clara was a declaration of intent, The Kitchen feels like a whispered vow.

I didn't make it straight away—life, deadlines, the usual list of excuses. But here we are, summer 2025, and I finally found myself at a table in Saifi, napkin in lap, heart thumping with the thrill of arrival.

The menu reads like a roll call of French bistro saints, with the occasional Italian cousin slipping past customs—froglegs—dainty, garlic-licked, crisp in all the right places. Foie gras, though I confess it was far too hot a night for its buttery opulence, so I politely deferred. Vitello tonnato, pale pink veal under a velvet cloak of tuna sauce, an odd dish on paper but an old Piedmontese miracle on the plate. And the duck confit, crisp skin surrendering to rich, saline flesh that seems designed to silence entire tables mid-conversation.

And the bread. Good grief, the bread. Baked to a brioche-like fluff, as if butter and flour had plotted to overthrow restraint. I tore into it with the urgency of a condemned man's final meal.

But food, as always with Villa Clara, is only half the story. The other half is Marie-Hélène, orchestrating the front of house with that mix of charm and steel only Lebanese women seem to manage. You'll notice the flowers first—vases of locally grown blooms, gathered weekly from the Lebanese flower market. It's a small gesture, but in Beirut, small gestures can feel radical. Supporting local growers is not only an aesthetic choice, but a quiet vote of confidence in a country where hope tends to wilt faster than roses in July.

Dining here isn't about being dazzled. It's about being restored. About remembering what Beirut once tasted like and believing, for the length of a meal, that it can taste that way again. Olivier, still behind the stove, doesn't so much reinvent French cooking as re-anchor it in sincerity. You taste technique, yes, but you also taste patience, stubbornness, and the kind of love that survives explosions, exile, and the fickleness of fortune.

Walking out into Saifi after dinner, I realised something. Villa Clara is not a restaurant you simply "review." It's a place you follow, across cities and islands, across blasts and rebuildings, across your own broken promises. From Byblos to Mar Mikhaël to Leros and back again, it is less a business than a pilgrimage route for those of us who believe meals can be memory, protest, and comfort all at once.

And so, to Olivier and Marie-Hélène: thank you for the return. Thank you for the frog legs, the duck confit, the bread, and the flowers. I may still owe you that trip to Leros, but in Saifi, at least, I finally kept my promise.