The first taste of grape leaves lands light and lemony on the tongue and immediately begs for more. Topped with pomegranate seeds and stuffed with rice, parsley and tomatoes, it’s both singing with flavour and seductively simple—the kind of cool dish perfect for a hot summer afternoon in Halifax. It’s the first thing chef Georges Elias offers a visitor to his Lower Water Street restaurant on a Thursday morning, before the lunch crowd filters in.
“I just love how people react,” he says, speaking with The Coast.
Two weeks into his restaurant’s opening, the 35-year-old Lebanese-born chef behind Au Liban (1460 Lower Water Street, in the former Hermitage building) can’t stop grinning. Reviews have been good. The kitchen is humming, the sun is shining and his front-of-house staff are already fielding reservations for the restaurant’s first day of lunch service.
“I’m just thrilled,” Elias says, seated at a table in the restaurant’s high-ceilinged dining room. “We want to introduce real, authentic Lebanese food [to Halifax]. And that’s what we’re doing.”
A lifelong passion for cooking
Elias arrived in Halifax from Lebanon six years ago. He’d cut his chef’s teeth in kitchens in Dubai, Iraq and all across his home country. But his culinary education started much earlier, and with different surroundings: At his mother’s stovetop in the Mediterranean seaside city of Batroun. She would set a chair for him beside the stove when she cooked baba ghanoush or kibbeh.
“I’d stand up in that chair and start asking questions, mixing the onions, whatever she’s adding,” he says. “To this day, I’m still asking my mom questions about cooking. She’s my idol.”
Despite his love for Lebanese cuisine, Elias’s culinary ventures in Halifax began elsewhere: He spent his first five years in Halifax working as head chef at La Piazza Ristorante, a sunny-patioed Chebucto Road favourite known for wood-fired pizzas and weekend brunch. The owner (and now business partner at Au Liban), Abboud “Albert” Zhouri, picked him up from the airport.
“I’d never met him before,” Elias says, with a laugh. “I’m close friends with his nephew back home. He told me, ‘My uncle wants a chef at his Italian restaurant.’ I’m like, ‘OK, I would love to go.’”
The two bonded. In those five years, Zhouri and Elias hosted Lebanese-themed dinners and dreamt of opening a restaurant that would highlight the best of their home cuisine. But the venue needed to be right. Finally, the corner lot that Hermitage had occupied at Lower Water and Bishop streets since 2020 became available. Elias was already smitten with the place. They pounced on the opening.
“I just love this place. It’s so cozy,” he says. “It’s a huge spot. I like the high ceilings; it makes you feel more comfortable… I love the concept of the open kitchen that we have, because you can see people, how they’re reacting to whatever they’re eating.
“Whenever you come to our restaurant, I want you to feel like you’re home—eating home cooking, but an upper scale.”
Menu offers mezze plates, elevated Lebanese cuisine
The grape leaves are just the smallest part of what Elias has envisioned for the menu. Hand-whipped hummus, baba ghanoush, and muhammara—think a red pepper dip that’s sweet, nutty and zesty all at once—feature prominently in Au Liban’s shared plates, alongside heartier offerings like marinated beef skewers with grilled serrano peppers and biwaz (parsley and onion salad), charbroiled shish tawook with grilled tomato and potatoes, and a grilled octopus dish that brings a grin to Elias’s face when he’s asked to describe it.
“Everyone’s used to eating octopus [that's] a bit rubbery, chewy,” he tells The Coast. Not at Au Liban, Elias promises. “Ours is tender and soft. We put a lot of cinnamon sticks and bay leaves in it, black pepper, fresh lemon quarters, just to give it extra flavour [as it boils]. After that, we char broil it with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. That’s it.”
For Elias, too, Halifax has become home. He shops for mixed greens at the Halifax Brewery Market. Takes comfort in the sea, and the fog, and the breeze of Haligonians and tourists alike who come in off the waterfront. And he wants to make them happy.
“This city is growing so fast,” he says. “I know a lot of restaurants, they’re working to get Michelin stars. I love just how much they’re taking the restaurant business to different levels.”
Au Liban is open seven days a week, from 11am to 11pm.
