Qahweh Baida

The name is the most consistently baffling thing Lebanese cuisine does to foreigners. You sit in a mountain café, you order coffee, and you receive a glass of hot water with the scent of orange blossoms. There is no coffee. There has never been coffee. There will not be coffee. The Lebanese drink qahweh baida because they want the social ritual of sitting with a hot drink — the warmth, the fragrance, the gesture of hospitality — without the caffeine. It is drunk by pregnant women, the elderly, and anyone who wants to sit and talk late into the night without being awake until dawn. Mountain village hosts offer it after a heavy meal — the traditional end-of-meal herbal drink, fragrant and warming. It is extraordinarily simple and, once you understand what it is, quietly lovely.