Hospitality is a matter of course for the Lebanese-Dutch creative strategist Carmen Atiyah de Baets. Although her professional background is in fashion, she has an instinct for hosting lavish family gatherings that she honed while traveling to Beirut with her Lebanese mother. “Lebanon is a place of contrasts,” says Atiyah de Baets, who grew up in the Netherlands and holds a degree in Middle East studies from SOAS University of London. “Rentals, sharing and hospitality, despite hardships, are deeply rooted in both our history and the stories we hear from our parents.”
In 2019, determined to support craftsmanship in the country, which has been in an economic crisis for the past four years, Atiyah de Baets and her boyfriend, Lebanese journalist Gilles Khoury, started collecting what she calls “little pieces of Lebanon” for a small collection of household items. This summer their selection of pottery, glassware, soaps and slippers — coming from all over the country on a two-month visit — will be for sale in the boutique in the Amsterdam canal house that Atiyah de Baets’ husband, the chef Joris ter Meulen Swijtink, inherited from his grandmother more than ten years ago. Last year, after a renovation that included plumbing and electrical updates, as well as kitchen replacement and expansion, the couple opened the 17th-century townhome as Carmen, a serene three-room guest house and shop. When the adjoining property became available this year, they added a café, Carmen Kitchen, where Ter Meulen Swijtink — who trained at St. John’s restaurant in London and is also a co-owner of Amsterdam’s Café Twee Prinsen natural wine bar — oversees a menu of simple seasonal dishes inspired by the couple’s travels.
On a sultry On Friday night in June, Atiyah de Baets gathered 20 guests, each with a connection to Lebanon, in Carmen’s garden to celebrate the store’s new collection. She invited Toutia, the Paris-Beirut-based food design studio, to prepare the meal, as part of a three-day residency at Carmen Kitchen. “Their food is Lebanese with a global mindset, which is very Lebanese in itself,” says Atiyah de Baets, referring to her culture’s history of displacement and exchange.
The mood during the dinner was cheerful, but also emotional: it had taken Atiyah de Baets and Khoury more than four years to bring together the objects for the store because of the energy shortages in Lebanon and the subsequent production delays. “You can’t make glass without gas,” says Atiyah de Baets. “And the money situation there is bad because of inflation. Many creative people have left.” Nevertheless, her purchasing visit to the country ended happily: “During that trip I got pregnant, which was a wonderful moment for me that the circle was complete.” Her one-year-old daughter, Biba, appeared fleetingly at the start of the party as guests were welcomed with glasses of Arak, an aniseed-flavored Levantine spirit. Once she was in bed, the party really started. It wasn’t finished until around 3am, when guests had devoured all the leftovers in the kitchen to a soundtrack of loud Arabic music.
The attendees: Atiyah de Baets, 32, and Ter Meulen Swijtink, 34, received 20 friends, relatives – including Atiyah de Baets’ mother, Miriam de Baets, 61 – and “Lebanese living in Amsterdam, whom I admire and wanted to connect with,” says Atiyah de Baets. Among the group were Khoury, 33; the artist Najla El Zein, 40; and the photographer and art director Maxime van Namen, 27.
The table: “I am not a flower person. We really wanted the food to be the decoration — in a non-performing way,” says Atiyah de Baets, who covered trestle tables with simple white linen tablecloths, borrowed white napkins from the café, and brought an assortment of dining and side chairs from the house.
The food: Tracy Zeidan, 31, and Théa Nasrallah, 23, the sisters behind Toutia, prepared a buffet of dishes presented in earthenware bowls sourced from the Carmen Collection from Assia, a village in northern Lebanon. They served slow-cooked lamb rolls, sumac and cardamom spiced chicken and roast potatoes alongside an array of salads, a labneh dip with grated cucumber, okra with tahini, halloumi with tomato jam and sumac-coated goat cheese balls. As appetizers there were cold mezes: kohlrabi with lemon, bottarga toast with za’atar and eggplant with shiso. In addition to Arak, the food was accompanied by natural wines – a dry white from Campania, an orange from Puglia and a light red from Calabria – chosen by Carmen’s manager, Pamela Mann.
The music: The designer Cynthia Merhej, who runs the womenswear label Renaissance Renaissance, which is partly based in Beirut, couldn’t come for dinner, so she sent a playlist of Arabic music in her place. “A few of my friends wore her designs, so I felt like she was there in my mind,” says Atiyah de Baets. Songs included “My Mother” by Lebanese composer and singer Marcel Khalife, “Soleil Soleil” by Libyan singer-songwriter Ahmed Fakroun, and “Yana Yana” by Lebanese singer Sabah.
The conversation: A built-in concrete seating area that opens directly to the back of the house created an intimate atmosphere as guests arrived, and the sliding door to the kitchen was kept open to allow conversation to flow to the chefs. Guests commented that the arrangement reminded them of terraces in Beirut, and Atiyah de Baets talked about how it was created during the renovation. “There are many seating areas in Lebanon made of raw concrete with cushions on top,” she says. “But the Dutch contractor didn’t quite understand: ‘A pit, with unfinished stone and wood?’ It was fun to see it in action.”
The recipe for the labneh eggs from Carmen Kitchen: To make your labneh, add a pinch of salt to some goat’s milk yogurt, wrap it in a piece of cheesecloth, and hang it over a bowl to strain for at least 24 hours (“or more, depending on how thick you want your labneh,” says Ter Meulen Swijtink). Clarify some butter and set it aside. In a bowl, make a fresh salad of mixed leaves, mint, dill and thinly sliced spicy radishes. Make a dressing from a small dollop of Dijon mustard, some olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper and dress the salad. Cut a finger-thick slice of sourdough bread and toast it until the edges begin to burn. (“It should be quite dark to ensure that the labneh doesn’t make the bread soggy,” advises Ter Meulen Swijtink.) Heat some of the clarified butter in a hot pan and then break two eggs into it. Halfway through the cooking time, add a generous amount of za’atar and spoon the hot butter over the eggs. Place a large dollop of labneh on the toast and spread it to the edges, top with the eggs and drizzle with the remnants of the butter-za’atar mix along with some salt flakes. Put the salad next to the toast and enjoy a hangover-busting breakfast.