Lebanese cuisine is an inexpensive delight. Using fresh and flavoursome ingredients and refined spicing, the Lebanese have taken the best aspects of Turkish and Arabic cooking and given them a French spin. A typical meal consists of a few mezze dishes, such as spinach pies, dips, dried cheese, pizza and stuffed vine leaves. The national dish is kibbe , a finely minced paste of lamb and bulgur wheat, sometimes served raw, but more often fried or baked into a pie. Meals are rounded off with syrupy baklava pastries or other semolina and walnut based desserts.
Arabic coffee is very popular.
Soft drinks include jellab , a delicious drink made from raisins and served with pine nuts, and ayran , a yoghurt drink. History Lebanon was the biblical 'land of milk and honey', and conquerors have always been attracted to its abundant natural resources, the safe anchorages on the coastline and the defensive possibilities of the high mountains. This has turned the country's history into a who's who of interlopers, pillagers and big-noters. The shores of Lebanon attracted settlers from about 10,000 BC onwards and by about 3000 BC, their villages had evolved into prototype cities. By around 2500 BC the coast had been colonised by people who later became known as the Phoenicians, one of the greatest early civilisations of the Mediterranean.