Libations and Labneh with legendary L’Area Paris owner, Edouard Chueke, an Interview
Words by Molly Apple
Image by Tom Guez
In the heart of the city known for its delicacies and intimacies sits an incomparable ‘resto’ nestled between the Marais and Bastille called L’Area. If you’re Paris-cultured, you already know it; If you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s a pleasure to introduce not only the place to be, but the person to know, Edouard Chueke. Known by many, loved by all, Edouard has cemented himself and his space as a pillar of communion for the artistic community. Musicians, journalists, architects, actors, it-girls, and fashion insiders, you never know who might pop into L’Area on any given evening.
Google’s description of the bar/restaurant, which reads ‘Lebanese food & cocktails, served in a retro bar with mosaic floors & exposed rafters’, lacks the quintessential spirit of L’Area - Edouard himself. A man with unmatched warmth, he welcomes both youngsters and the well-lived into his world of joy and spontaneity, not to mention a back room of billowing smoke. That’s right, you can smoke cigarettes inside the restaurant. Perhaps if Carrie Bradshaw had discovered L’Area during her short stint in Paris, she would have left both of her American men for a Frenchman puffing a cigarette in Edouard's cave full of whiskey, wine, and mezze.
“ It’s a hard business, there are 4,500 other places to go in Paris, and I love when people return every night here.”
I’d name my first born after Edouard just to get a glance at his rolodex. Though I gather it’s his discreet and humble air about him, a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’, that keeps his loyal community coming back. The term customer seems crass in a place like L’Area. I certainly felt an immediate kinship to Edouard after our introduction and french bisous, like he was a distant uncle or family friend. During our hour-long conversation - and in between brief interruptions for a few espressos made for neighborly patrons, the brief tangent and more than a few cigarettes - I had the delight of recounting Edouard’s life story and the origins of L’Area itself. From Beirut to Rio, New York to Paris, I felt as though I was stepping into a middle-eastern telenovela. As we spoke, so did the walls, recalling the memories of a man who dedicated his life to creating space for pure enjoyment and connection. Libations and Labneh aside, Edouard created L’Area to celebrate the important things in life, and I was lucky enough to inhale a small part of it.
Image by Tom Guez
M: Tell me about the framed photo of your parents that is hanging in the entrance of the restaurant.
E: This photo is from 1970, or 1969, the two people on the right are my parents, and on the left are two very important people from Lebanon. This was the Prime Minister for a year pictured here with his wife on the right, in Beirut.
M: How did your parents know the prime minister?
E: Beirut was very small, it was easier at this time, there were less problems with religious freedom or inequality. At this time, life in Beirut was very easy for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and Maronite. We shared a first language of French, and after, Arabic, and then English sometimes for business negotiations and such. I was a kid, but it was fantastic, a real paradise. People at this time, and even when the war started in 1975, there was a period of about 10 years when Lebanon was really the Switzerland of the Middle East. Life was good, there was a smaller gap between the rich and poor and the large middle class. Traveling around Lebanon was easy, you could go from Beirut to Farrah in the mountains in forty minutes. It would feel like if you were in New York and forty minutes later you were in Colorado skiing - it was a dream at the time. My parents decided to move to Brazil where I went to French school.
M: What moved your parents to South America?
Partial view upon Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as seen from Corcovado via Department of Geography at UC Berkeley
E: My grandfather, the father of my father, decided in the 20s or 30s, when he was 14, to go from Beirut to South America by boat. His first intention was to go to Argentina, but he stopped north and stayed in the North of Brazil,Salvador for four years, from the age of 14 to 18. Fifty years later, when the situation was tense in Lebanon, for the Jewish Community and also the Christian community, he told his kids, my father Felix and his brother Saul, Joseph, Victor and Alfonse, that he knew that many people in the Lebanese community were going west, to Canada, Montreal and New York, all the east coast of North America. Brazil now has 12 million people originally from Lebanon. Type it into your phone, you’ll see it. If you look at the recipes in most restaurant kitchens in Brazil, there’s always like five things from Lebanon. How to make the hummus, how to make the grape leaves, how to make the tabouleh. If you ask any Brazilian boy or girl, they know kibbeh, labneh and sfeeha. It would be like asking someone if they know where to find couscous in Paris but it’s more impressive. They used to have two governors in Saul Paolo originally from Lebanon, and the most popular and impressive Lebanese man outside Lebanon was the ex-director of Renault. He was born in Brazil to Lebanese parents, raised in Lebanon, with French residency. I know his story, and this type of story is more common than you think, the connection between Lebanon, France and Brazil.
Street in Beirut - 1970, via www.lebanoninapicture.com
M: After finishing French school in Brazil, where did you go next?
E: At the age of 16, I got my own apartment in Brazil and only went back to Beirut for a few months when I was 17. I wondered what life was like in New York, so I went with the intention of staying one or two months, and I said four years. After this, I went back to Paris, then back to New York for two more years.
M: What did you do for work in New York?
E: I was working for a friend of mine, who’s unfortunately died, as a writing agent, for an agency that still exists in Paris. I represented some new French writers in New York at eighteen. I did this for six months and decided to move to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, where I worked at SOB for four months. Afterward , I decided to move back to Paris. France was, for a moment, the Lebanese motherland. My parents were Lebanese, but my uncle’s were French, the brother of my father was born in Paris, and they used to live here when they were kids at Vincennes. I stayed one year doing nothing, before returning to Brazil.
M: Where were your parents?
E: They are always between Lebanon, Italy and Brazil. My father worked with his brother for 51 years in ‘Filleature’ - cotton and polyester fabric production. They used to have a factory in Lebanon, and the idea when we moved to Brazil was to open a factory there in Rio. You have the city of Rio, and you have the State of Rio, and the factory was about two hours from the city of Rio. They sold the factory not too long ago. It was horrible. My father died about nine years ago. The factory was amazing, but the machines were old, so there are only two solutions - to buy all new machines or the kids, me, my brother, and my cousins– work with the outdated machinery. It was impossible, and we were forced to accept an extremely low-value proposition from evangelists who proposed to purchase the factory. It was truly a family business. Every other Friday as a kid, in Beirut or in Brazil, I decided by myself not to go to school, and I would join my father and his brothers at the factory. I loved it. You know, there is a wonder filmmaker and screenwriter, Samuel Benchetrit, - you know Jules, his son, he comes here often, handsome guy - anyways we’ve been friends for a long time and he said one day he wants to make a movie about this, not exactly my story, but about this kind of family business. This kind of relationship my father had with his brothers, you see this only with Coppola or Scorsese . They’re so close, if one of them was sick, even just a cold, my father would be at his brothers apartment checking in to make sure they were okay. It’s fantastic. It’s because they had a father that was very *bangs on table* hard on them as kids, and would tell them you must be a certain way. It’s why they worked fifty years together. There was a lot of love. But it was horrible for the wives *laughs* it’s not so easy. I was very close with my father, as with my mother and siblings too. I was always happy to be with him and talk even just about simple things. At the end of this life, we decided to go to the Brazilian ’Saint Tropez’ that they call Buzios. He told me for the first time he told me his life story growing up as a kid in Lebanon and in Italy, his relationship with his parents, which took two days. Type Brigitte Bardo Buzios, she kind of discovered it for the world 60s and 70s.
M: Did you always know you wanted a restaurant, what were your jobs after moving from Paris, to New York, to Brazil?
E: When I returned to Brazil after Paris, I reconnected with a friend from the French school, his name is Stephan Petlet, who was working with gems and jewelry. He was operating in two places, one was Roditi, Hanster. In Brazil they have two very important stones:one is Aquamarine, (green one) Tourmaline. I told him I needed work and he offered me a job where I was a street salesman. My strategy was to speak to French looking tourists in Brazil and help them find better alternatives to hotels, or restaurants, hoping they would t come back and purchase jewelry to return to France with.
M: Were you a good salesman?
E: Stephan was better than me, but I was good because I speak a lot of languages.
M: How many languages are you fluent in?
E:French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic and I pray in Hebrew.
Brigitte Bardot in the 1960s via The Copacabana Palace Hall of Fame
Rio de Janeiro - Consulate Office Building via The U.S. National Archives
M: How long did you stay in Brazil this time?
E: Two years passed, and Brazil was getting more dangerous. It was the early 90s. I went back to New York for a few months where my brother was working as a music conductor and living in Roosevelt Island. I traveled back to Brazil when my father was having health problems, and it was then that I was at the beach where I saw my wife. I just saw her, we discussed. Five years passed, I was living in Paris and I went to Brazil for Pesach to my cousin Morice’s apartment and I saw my wife, Lydie, she was there. I said excuse me, I remember you, I saw you five or six years ago on the beach. What are you doing here in Rio? She was working for a travel agency and staying for a year. I had a lovely night with Lydie, and told her I was living in Paris and just visiting my parents in Brazil. She told me she was staying in the most beautiful hotel in Rio, her job had offered her either a very good salary for the tours in Brazil or she stayed in the Wonder hotel, and she chose the hotel.
M: I like your wife.
E: It’s totally true. She invited me to stay at her apartment in the hotel. It was the Rio Palace. And we fall in love – well I fell in love first. My parents asked me if I was going back to Paris a week later, but I told them I met a wonderful person, and we stayed in the hotel for five months. What a life. I returned to working with the gems. I had a bodyguard with me everyday. Lydie had to return to Paris, but I told her that in maybe two or three years I was sure we would make our life together. She said ‘you’re crazy, I never met a guy like you’ and I said ‘I think you’re the woman of my life.’
M: What did you do in the time Lydie was in Paris and you were in Rio?
E: I opened a little place that we called Salem Alech. It was a tiny restaurant in Rio, with the same type of people that come to L’Area now. The best kinds of people, the singers, people in fashion. In the beginning I thought it would be open from 7 am to 7 pm, serving Lebanese food like hummus and kibbeh, but we definitely ended up closing at one o’clock in the morning everyday.
M: What years was Salem Alech open?
E: It was the early 90s. I have a totally incredible story for you. I was in the store and some very rich woman came to my place and asked me to prepare a huge dinner for 20-30 people. She said ‘I’m coming back tomorrow.’ The restaurant was in front of what we called the ‘Journalist building’ where many worked, and between Ipanema and Leblon. It’s like if I said to you between Le Marais and Bastille. She returned the next day with her chauffeur. She was wearing a beautiful, beautiful bracelet –this is very important. At this time I used to have a body guard outside, as I have security outside L’Area now, but I didn’t know this bodyguard in Rio had a gun. Brazil was very dangerous, and he would stand outside, he was military, and from the north and wore a cowboy hat. All of a sudden, four little kids arrived outside with guns and grabbed her saying ‘Give me the bracelet and the food.’
M: It’s like ‘City of God.’
E: She said ‘I’m not going to give it to you.’ My bodyguard took out his gun and shot at the sky ‘boom boom.’ The kids shot at the store, and everyone in the restaurant dropped for cover. The bodyguard, Lamartine, killed two of the four kids. They died on the street, one was injured and one ran into the Journalist Building with the bracelet. I said to Lamartine, ‘Why did you do this?’ And you know what he replied to me? He yelled ‘are you afraid?’ I said ‘I’m totally afraid man.’ I thought I had to fire him. The police came, Lamartine showed them his captain’s military badge and told them the kids were trying to rob his client. I waited two days, and told him it wasn’t a good idea for him to work here anymore. I had to tell him to leave because all the kids of the favela came to tell me they wouldn’t hurt me or my family but they were going to kill this Lamartine. He left, and four months later they discovered his body in the north of Rio.
I had to lift my jaw off the floor before we continued.
M: When did you reunite with Lydie?
E: I asked if she would stay in France or come back to Brazil, and I said to her ‘I know that I’m going to be back in Paris’, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to stay living there. I told her, ‘I’m coming and I have an idea, ‘I want to open a place in Paris where we would receive journalists, people who work in fashion and music’ – and we opened L’Area at the end of 1995.
M: So you’ve been open for almost 30 years, wow.
E: We had to close at the beginning, because of some problems with the property, for a year and a half, as well as during COVID, for nearly two years.. It was horrible. Throughout the COVID closure, I received hundreds of messages asking when we would be open again. People know I don’t sleep until 4 am sometimes, and every night I read 50-100 messages. If it would have been closed for just 3 more months, it would have been finished.
Image by Tom Guez
M: When did you reopen?
E: We reopened in 2021, and the day we announced that we had the license and authorization to reopen from the government, the cops came because there were about 700 people on the street outside. We now have the ‘COVID terrace’ on the street until 10 p.m.
M:How involved is your wife Lydie in the operation of the restaurant?
E: Lydie c’est une femme discret, and she’s always looking out for the best for the restaurant. She’s a wonderful person. She used to work with me at night, but damn, nightlife – when you work overnight, it’s totally draining. It’s a hard business, there are 4,500 other places to go in Paris, and I love when people return every night here. Lydie is essential to the restaurant, with the food and decor, her desserts are incredible
Image by Tom Guez
M:Everybody loves you, you love everybody, you remember everybody, how is that for you mentally?
E:It’s my nature, I’ve always been the same guy, from my 30s to 40s to 50s. The only thing that’s changed is this *takes off his cap* my white hair. This place gives me energy. I don’t do drugs, if I did, this place is finished. I’m naturally excited, I love people. But if one day I’m depleted, people ask ‘where is the Edouard that we know’? It’s a pressure everyday.
M:How do you deal with this pressure and balance your energy?
E: I try to make the best of every day.
M: After 30 years of building relationships with notable industry insiders, I notice a flood of young people discovering and celebrating the spirit of L’Area, do you see yourself as a kind of mentor, connector of people, or even matchmaker?
E: There’s young people coming, they're 18, 19, and it can start off in this way, but afterward, we become friends. I was a matchmaker, like 200 people, but with real science. People know I have 5,000 people on my mind. I’ve facilitated some love for sure. You know why I do this? Because it’s a good deed.
M: You’re full of good deeds.
E: What is the most important thing in life to me? To be a mensch. It’s not money, of course it’s heath, but (most of all), it’s to be a mensch.
In a place that invites a community of global artists, journalists, musicians, actors, and fashion insiders, there will undoubtedly be strong political and social opinions, yet L’Area remains an all-accepting atmosphere where egos are dropped at the door. Edouard says, ‘Here is a place for happiness– eating, drinking, chilling. I truly believe every person can be a good person.”
In this spirit, we see another 30 years of L’Area, where this special person can be found every night except Monday, most likely in a cheeky cap ready to introduce you to the person you never knew you needed to meet.
Image by Tom Guez
Image by Tom Guez