From the mid ’90s to the early 2000s, having a spherical of “zeitouna,” or “olive,” pictures was not often deliberate for Beirut bargoers. A tray of shot glasses containing vodka, a splash of lemon juice, a pair dashes of Tabasco and a pickled olive would mysteriously seem when the vitality of the night time conjured them. As a ceremony of passage for many coming-of-age celebrations at first of the brand new millennium, the traditional zeitouna established itself as a assured staple at any Beirut bar.
The origin delusion of the combination is a blurry one, however essentially the most generally advised model is that the shot was invented in a dive bar within the Hamra district by a person referred to as Amigo within the Nineteen Nineties. Within the intervening years, the drink has joined the 1000’s of Lebanese people who have traveled overseas throughout Lebanon’s newest waves of emigration, making appearances in Berlin, Brooklyn, Barcelona, Paris and Riga. Alongside the way in which, the zeitouna turned often known as the Doudou, rumored to be so named as a result of serving it introduced in plenty of {dollars} (“doudou” is slang for “{dollars}”). However again in its birthplace of Beirut, three many years since its rumored inception, the enduring shot is evolving in line with a quickly altering metropolis.
Camo Njeim, beverage director at Wisors Hospitality Group, which runs The Horrible Prince, Kissproof and Vyvyan’s, says the Doudou has at all times been the top-selling shot at his bars. At The Horrible Prince, Njeim reinterprets the shot as a cocktail, which he sees as a tribute to Amigo, “a profession working bartender that may sacrifice his life for hospitality,” he says. The drink is pre-batched, then sees the addition of olive and parsley oils, a meaty, smoked Spanish olive and a pickled chile pepper as a substitute of Tabasco, all served in a calming Nick & Nora glass straight from the freezer. “If you happen to like Martinis, soiled Martinis, olives, Doudou pictures, you’d discover it a very elegant model whereas respecting the parts,” says Njeim. “There’s warmth, there’s the olive—the star is the massive olive—it’s exhausting to not prefer it.”
Yves Massoud is the bartending co-partner at Fizz, a neighborhood bar within the Mar Mikhael space. He used to work with Wisors at Kissproof and, like Njeim, he spent Monday nights at Amigo’s. Fizz’s Doudou can also be an ode to Amigo. “Doudou is a part of the tradition and a part of Lebanese hospitality. That is the way it was created; he’s the grasp of internet hosting folks,” says Massoud.
The Fizz Doudou maintains the essence of the traditional, however Massoud provides chipotle Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce to reinforce the smoke and umami notes. The olives are native, sourced from one other associate’s lands within the southern Lebanon village of Lebaa. (Whereas Fizz makes its personal sizzling sauce, bartenders don’t use it within the Doudou but; it’s a matter of mechanics because the bottles’ stoppers make it troublesome to sprint the correct quantity.)
For Rani Al Rajji, proprietor and architect behind the bar Brazzaville, the important thing to an ideal Doudou is to not lower corners wherever within the easy shot, even when sticking to the old-school recipe. “To begin with, we don’t use low-grade components. In relation to the olives, we get good olives. That’s not very troublesome in Lebanon,” he says. “We don’t get these Martini olives as a result of on the finish of the day they’re coming from overseas, they’re imported, we don’t know the origin. They appear pretend. They appear plasticky.” The identical goes for the remainder of the components. “Unique Tabasco, not a knock-off, and we put a couple of drops of brine, freshly squeezed lemon juice—I feel the secret’s simplicity and the best components, not going low-cost,” he says.
Al Rajji is hoping to create an olive brine extract infused with the warmth factor that he can use in a Doudou-inspired cocktail fairly than a shot. “The period the place folks have been ingesting plenty of pictures is kinda over, within the sense that even the younger technology, they’re in search of low ABV, they’re in search of more healthy stuff,” he says. “Every part has to vary; you possibly can take the highlights of sure issues and attempt to reinvent them and attempt to recompose them into one thing related.”
Right this moment, the Doudou symbolizes two completely different Beiruts. For Lebanese folks overseas, they’re a nostalgic vestige of a youth set in a Beirut that has lengthy since disintegrated. After a monetary collapse, the onset of a worldwide pandemic, the 2020 port explosion, and now the Israeli aggression alongside the southern border and in neighboring Palestine, the Beirut of the ’90s has grow to be as romanticized because the one of many ’60s, Beirut’s so-called “golden age.” For these nonetheless in Lebanon, the brand new Doudous are a reinterpretation of those self same fantasies, however one which captures the present cussed, inventive vitality of the town.
When expats and residents reunite at a bar, the Doudou turns into a mix of what Beirut was and what it may grow to be if it have been a house nobody needed to go away behind. The trick is to recollect what that appears like when the morning comes.
