Kara and Nate Buchanan film a Beirut food vlog focused on exploring Lebanese street food and communal breakfasts. The episode follows an improvised route (they intentionally avoided buying a local SIM), sampling sesame bread with cheese and sumac, a kunafa sandwich, and several shared dishes at a crowded breakfast spot introduced by local strangers: fried bread topped with a yogurt–tahini mix and pine nuts, masabaja (a thick hummus variant), ful (stewed fava beans), and lamb testicles. They also try a rolled dough pie with pomegranate and meat from a bakery, pause at a café for coffee and Wi‑Fi, and reflect on Lebanese hospitality and unexpected, memorable encounters.
Chapters
And next thing we knew, we were having a meal with strangers. So Cron. Robbie. Oh, so good. I think we'll try the lamb testicles.
Okay.
Simple and easy. Testicles right here.
This feels very wrong.
Hi. How are you?
Oh, wow. Wow.
Good morning from Beirut. Today is one of my favorite kind of days.
We are devoting today's entire video to trying as much delicious Lebanese as possible.
Let's go.
All right. Strong start. It's our first place. It's closed.
This is not on the agenda today, but when you walk by a guy pushing, trying to fresh bread.
You can't say no. Can I add some cheese, too? He's going to put cheese on it. Oh, looks so good.
I don't know what he asked. Oh, yeah, Some spices.
How much?
Yay. Oh, I'm so excited.
Should get us to our first stop.
Bread with sesame seeds.
It's actually delicious.
He added this red spice to it, which I'm pretty sure is called sumac. It's like a sour, super salty, yummy spice that just enhances the cheese perfectly.
Very dry. Kind of hard to swallow if you.
Take a big bite, but it's so good.
Okay.
All right.
Great start.
Cutie.
We are starting strong. We have just maybe made the greatest discovery in the world. This is kunafa. It is my new favorite sweet since we've been here in the Middle East. But here in Lebanon, they put a twist on it. They make it even more unhealthy. So kunafa is cheese with this sweet semolina on top of it, and then they douse it all in this sugary syrup and. But here, just take it one step further. They put it inside of a piece of bread and turn it into a kunafa sandwich that is just oozing with cheese. And here it is acceptable to eat for breakfast. Mmm. Wow, wow, wow, wow. It's too good. But I'm scared if I ate too much of it, the food tour is just gonna be over. Now, like, this thing can keep you full for the entire day.
This is one of the few countries that we don't have cell phone service in and we haven't bought a SIM card. We're just trying to be without Internet this week, which means that we can't do our normal Googling everything, figuring out how to pronounce things using our Google Maps. So we did a lot more research than we normally do before leaving. And we had this, like, exact route that we were gonna take. We knew everything we were going to eat. We know where we were going to Eat it. And so far, we haven't done any of our plans. We just walked by and bought the two. First two things that we saw. We left something for the bakery.
We put food inside.
Thank you so much.
We forgot because the food was so good.
Oh, that was almost bad.
This restaurant behind me, CNN called one of the top 10 breakfasts in the world. We walked about a half mile to get here, and we've barely seen anyone this morning. And then we get here, and there's all these people eating at this restaurant. So we're gonna go see if it lives up to the height. I don't know how we get a table or tell someone that we're waiting. It's literally full. I'm so excited because everyone here looks local, too. Like it's not a bunch of tourists.
He said I can translate for him.
So what.
What is it you want?
What do you think we should get?
You can order something else, and we can share all together.
That's great. Yeah.
Would you like to have some tea with it?
Sure.
Habibi. Come in.
Okay. Well, we have made two new local friends, and we're sharing a table together because meals are better when they're shared.
Absolutely.
Because in Lebanon, you order all of these foods, and then you just share with everyone. So that's what we're doing, and we're trying some new foods now. I'm a little nervous about. Our feast has arrived. I'm so excited about this. The first thing I'm trying is called.
It's fried bread on the bottom. Then there's this yogurt tahini mixture on top. And then they top it off with these sizzling hot, fried, buttery, oily pine nuts. It's beautiful. Festive. Blah. Bl.
Look at that.
That's so cute.
Oh, my gosh. That yogurt. It's got that, like, sourness that yogurt has. But then it's balanced with the tahini, and the little bits of chickpea in there.
Give it such a good texture. Oh, that's amazing. It kind of reminds me, like, kind of how sour cream on a burrito. Like, it just kind of, like, rounds it all out. I love the crunchy pie that's on top. The next dish is called masabaja, which is, from what I understand, like a thicker hummus. Like hummus with some spunk. I love olive oil. Speaking of, let me get some of this.
Okay.
There is an art. How to scoop it on. You do this like that.
Okay.
And you go like this.
So you make like, a Little scoop like a shovel. See, you mean you don't just dip it in there and let it drip all off your hand like this? I'll make my next bite a little neater. The wasaba hawk is so good. It's warm and it's lemony. There's lemon squeezed on top like it's like a comfort food. So ful is basically fava beans that they cook. And then I was watching the chef. He has this huge pot of them that he's stirring. Whenever he gets an order, he grabs a bowl, he puts a huge spoon in there, and then he takes another spoonful of chickpeas and puts it on top and just mushes them all up and then tops it off with warm, fresh olive oil.
I love it with onion.
I love that there's an art to eat all of these food. And we wouldn't know any of this without our new friends. So I'm very glad that we met. I'm gonna take my bread, I'm gonna put a piece of a raw onion and then get a big bite of.
Excellent.
Very tasty.
It really is the best breakf. I agree with cnn.
This is the testicle.
So this is the main event.
It's simple and easy. The testicle. You can go like that.
Get some sauce, get some testicles.
Okay.
I never thought I would be eating lamb testicles, but here we go.
I just thought about it for a second. It's delicious.
I'm not kidding. It's like so tender. I just can't believe this impression was.
Kind of like what I'm doing. How am I doing that?
Really? Like, if you just gave me a bite of that, I would think it was like a really fatty piece of lamb, basically. I mean, it tastes like a fatty piece of lamb that's really, really soft. And it's testicles. I'm just like. Anytime I think about it, I get grossed out.
This one's for you.
This feels very wrong. If you feeding me. You know what.
The taste is? The taste is good. The texture is not weird. Like, it's. It's a little soft, but there's nothing to, like, weird you out about it while you're eating it. So if you don't think about what.
You'Re eating, that's when you go to wrong. You gotta chase it with some mint leaves. The sauce is actually really yummy. It has some onions in there, butter, garlic. It's really savory.
Thank you, my friend.
Nice to meet you.
Pleasure talking to you and seeing you.
Okay, thank you so Much. Bye.
Bye.
Goodbye.
They were awesome. Today is not going like we planned at all, but it is better than our plans. It all started because I was standing in front of the restaurant audibly confused. I was like. I was like, oh, I wonder what they're cooking in that pot.
As usual.
And that guy just walked up next to me and he was like, oh, that's chickpeas. And we started talking and next thing we knew, we were having a meal.
With strangers ordering lamb testicles.
We never would have ordered those. I would have had no idea they were even on the menu.
And they were so interesting. Like, we ended up kind of like getting their whole life story. I don't know. This is one of those experiences you can't plan for. And we go out, you kind of like, hopefully stuff like that happens, but it's every once in a while. And today was special.
And this has been our experience in Lebanon and Jordan so far. And really all of the Middle Eastern countries, like, the people are so hospitable and welcoming. It's amazing. Like, I felt like we were sitting down with old friends.
We could go home now and I'd say it's been the best day. But we're not. We have a lot more food to try.
And it's getting way colder.
It dropped at least 10 degree while we were eating.
So when we were researching what we wanted to eat today, I did something that I've never done before, and I went to Instagram and I just typed in hashtag Beirut food. And I was just kind of seeing what I could find. And I found this bakery that looked super unique and it's actually our minion. So we've ordered this thing that. You need to forgive me for my pronunciation. Lakmadu, something like that. It's like a rolled up piece of dough with pomegranate and some kind of meat. I'm not really sure.
That was amazing. Kind of like a pizza. Like a rolled up pizza. There's one guy over here rolling out the dough and then he tosses the dough to another guy. He puts all the toppings on and then they throw it in this massive oven. It's super crunchy and crispy on the edges. And then the meat is really savory, but it has like sour pomegranate, like syrup in there. Super nice and warm on my hands. Fresh out of the oven.
So we walked pretty much all the way across town to get to what is supposed to be the best Arabic bakery and the best Arabic ice cream shop in town.
Maybe Sunday wasn't the best day to go on a food tour, so we thought we'd cheer ourselves up in this really cool cafe. Some nice hot coffee, and they have free wi Fi, so we're gonna do a little bit more research before going to our next place. Not complaining.
Okay. We are warm, we are caffeinated, and now we are ubering all the way back to the other side of town, where this whole journey began.
