Centrale Review

Being a food and clubbing addict, I’m often asked to recommend a place to friends wanting to go out on a romantic date, fine drink or exquisite dinner. If you’ve ever asked me, you will know my first choice is Centrale.

Centrale is the first restaurant I ever reviewed over a year ago, and I felt it is only fair to repost a better-written and more illustrated review. Especially given the attention its architect, Bernard Khoury, has been recently getting with Johnny Walker’s Keep Walking Lebanon campaign.

Centrale is located in Gemmayzeh, on Mar Maroun Street. This area was abandoned during the Lebanese Civil War, being only meters away from the demarcation line. Centrale is housed in a 1920s residential building, whose facade has been largely maintained, reinforced with a steel framework to support the venue’s 17-meter long tunnel-like bar, with a retractable roof.

The 3-story building has been emptied out on the inside, and the walls covered with large wooden panels on two sides, and Lebanon’s largest wine cellar on the other, complete with a built-in elevator. The fourth wall houses a vintage elevator, complete with leather couches and only two buttons: one for the restaurant floor, the other for the tubular bar upstairs.

Wooden tables and booths, fitted with black leather cushions offer comfortable seating amidst never-overpowering and diverse music. The elevated ceiling, along with the multi-level wine cellar and elevator shaft, make the interior a grandiose atrium-like space with plenty to admire and second-glance while enjoying your meal and glass of wine.

In summer, the terrace outside the building is where you want to sit. The courtyard is segmented into different-sized compartments, accommodating more intimate 2-person tables, and larger more spacious ones catering for diners in the order of a dozen or more. These segments are divided by walls of jasmine plants, the indigenous Mediterranean flower with an aroma like no other.

The food can only be described as perfect. The French gourmet cuisine never fails to please my somewhat picky and difficult taste. The entrees, salads, main courses and desserts are all a fusion of beautiful presentation combined with an explosion of flavor with every bite. Our desensitized taste buds gobble up the most wretched of foods every day, but at Centrale, you expose the receptors on your tongue and olfactory bulb to flavors and tastes that will have the pleasure-inducing neurotransmitters rushing through your brains.

I cannot recommend a particular dish or entrée, mainly because Centrale changes its menu every 6 months. This is hard for me to take, for whenever I fall in love with something on the menu, it most likely isn’t there the next time I go. But this is also a magnificent trait of the place, for there is alway something new to explore and the menu never becomes redundant or mundane, with Chef specialties and most of the items on the menu changing twice every year.

Dinner at Centrale without wine is a crime, and I do recommend a fine bottle of chilled rose with your dinner. For the real connoisseurs, you will drool once you set eyes upon the massive cellar and heavy wine menu, with bottles from around the world and Lebanon stocked and ready for your nostrils and tongues.

After savoring every bite and sip, it’s time to go. Go up that is. The moment you’ve settled your bill, you get into the elevator and enjoy a slow ride up to the bar, taking in the architecture and design from a different birds-eye perspective. You then arrive at a narrow, metallic tunnel, separated by a long bar on one side, and cozy benches on the other. The tube’s upper half, is retractable, a Bernard Khoury signature trait, seen also in his iconic B018 club.

So, Centrale is indeed the perfect venue, in terms of architecture, location, history, cuisine, drinks and amenities.

Despite my obvious infatuation with the place, I try to go there on special occasions only, and invite you to do the same, at least to the restaurant. Save it for that special date, fond farewell or warm welcome back as I have over the years.

I hope you enjoy Centrale as much as I have, and just FYI, Central is number 38 on Worldsbestbars.com

The Verdict: Perfect

Price: 150USD for a 3- course dinner for two with a fine bottle of wine

Atmosphere: Read Above

Staff: Excellent

Food: Read Above