Tony Kitous launched Comptoir Libanais in 2008 to bring Lebanese cuisine to the masses on the British high street. He believes Lebanese food can become as mainstream as Italian cuisine. Comptoir Libanais serves approachable Lebanese dishes from mezze to shawarma under £8 to introduce people to the cuisine. Kitous' goal is to expand Comptoir Libanais and make Lebanese food as common on British streets as Italian restaurants.

1. 24| March 2015 | restaurant| bighospitality.co.uk
Tony Kitous is on a mission to bring Lebanese food to
the high street and believes that the shawarma has
what it takes to one day oust the burrito and the burger
E
verything is eaten with hands
here,” proclaims my host, setting
our knives and forks aside. He
reaches over and dunks a lamb kibbeh
into its mint flecked-yoghurt sauce and
practically shoves it into my mouth. Tony
Kitous is on a one-man mission to bring
Lebanese food to the masses, and he’s
not going to let something as trivial as
basic table manners get in his way.
In 2008, Algerian-born Kitous
launched Comptoir Libanais, a scalable
restaurant format designed from the
ground up to win Lebanese food a
presence on the high street. “I’m a proud
man. It kills me that practically every
other cuisine has gone mainstream yet
Lebanese food and Middle Eastern food
in general is still ghettoised,” he says.
“Yes, there are some great ethnic
restaurants in ethnic areas but they’re
not aimed at British people. Our food has
yet to go mass market in that sense.”
Kitous’ strategy is centered on making
Lebanese cuisine more accessible and
less ‘ethnic’. Our current location serves
as a good illustration. The group’s
Chelsea-branch – there are now 10
Comptoirs in and around London – has a
clean, contemporary look with retail
products lining the walls. Think Bill’s via
Beirut. Cleverly, it manages to work in
modern Middle Eastern elements – bold
geometric patterns, vintage movie
posters – while avoiding clichéd
elements. There’s not a hookah pipe or
sequined cushion in sight.
Our tiny table is becoming hopelessly
gridlocked. Kitous isn’t eating much
today but orders a seemingly endless
succession of dishes nonetheless. It’s
partly because Levantine culinary
traditions demand I leave utterly replete
Words/Joe Lutrario
The
Arabian
knight
but – it transpires – he also wants to
assess the quality of his chef’s output.
Through the meal he points out tiny
shortcomings in dishes and on one
occasion even sends a plate back to the
kitchen because the garnish isn’t correct.
“I’m not going to kick ass,” he assures me.
“But I’m going to have a word with the
chefs and say that some things were
great and others need some work.”
Front of house is coming in for some
scrutiny, too. Almost involuntarily,
Kitous’ eyes dart about the room to see if
his guests have everything they need.
This isn’t for show. In fact, he struggles to
keep his attention focused on the
interview and off the restaurant floor.
“I dislike the fact we’re a chain. My
biggest worry is losing control as we
grow. That’s why our expansion has been
fairly slow,” he says as he worriedly
surveys the room. “I’m concerned about
the execution. As we grow, the cracks get
bigger and it becomes harder and harder
for me to keep on top of things.”
Kitous is eating selectively because he
needs to lose 12kg for his fifth Marathon
de Sables in Morocco next month. “It’s
the toughest foot race on earth. People

2. theworlds50best.com | restaurant| March 2015 | 25
Business Profile
Tony Kitous
die,” he says, rather bluntly, before
devouring a large portion of foul
moudamas, a protein-packed stew of
crushed beans with tomatoes and olive
oil that – along with chicken shawarma –
forms the basis of his training diet. “It’s
like a drug for me. It started with half
marathons then full marathons, but I’m
always chasing that first buzz so I’ve
gone on to more extreme running
challenges. This will be my ninth
ultra-marathon,” he adds.
The Marathon de Sables is a 156-mile
race (the equivalent of six marathons
back-to-back) in the searing heat of
southern Morocco. Kitous must carry all
of his food in a backpack and spend his
nights on the floor of a Bedouin tent.
It’s fair to say he’s of the ‘go big or go
home’ school, then. On arriving in
London in his late teens with no English,
no cash and nowhere to sleep, Kitous
worked a string of low-level hospitality
jobs including spells as a porter, barman
and pizzaiolo. Just a few years later, in
1993, he had got together enough money
to open his first restaurant – Baboon on
Marylebone’s Wigmore Street – and was
soon established as a high-profile
London restaurateur working with the
era’s big name chefs including Gary
Hollihead and Pat McDonald.
In 2000, Kitous launched his first
Middle Eastern restaurant, Levant in
Marylebone. “It was like coming home. I
realised I’d been operating outside of my
comfort zone. This was the food that I
knew and loved.”
More Middle Eastern restaurants
followed – Kenza in Liverpool Street and
Levantine in Paddington (now a
Comptoir) – and Kitous purchased and
turned around Richard Caring’s Moroccan
restaurant Pasha in Kensington. Levant
and Kenza are pricier and more special
occasion-driven than Comptoir and trade
as one-offs within Kitous’ 13-strong Levant
Restaurants Group.
Kitous describes himself as an
accomplished home cook rather than a
chef. He doesn’t have an executive chef
or development chef, and personally
pens the menus at all of his restaurants
as well as keeping tabs on food quality.
When he’s not training for punishing
runs he is a prolific eater, travelling to
the Middle East dozens of times a year.
Despite not being a chef, Kitous has
become a successful envoy for Lebanese
food in the UK, with numerous
appearances on TV food shows and two
successful Comptoir-branded
cookbooks. He points out that his lack of
professional kitchen experience makes it
It’s not a sprint: Tony Kitous
would rather expand
the business slowly

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4. Business Profile
theworlds50best.com | restaurant| March 2015 | 27
Tony Kitous
easier for him to translate dishes for
home cooks and create a restaurant
brand that focuses on simpler, easy-to-
understand dishes.
“What I cook is not complicated. Far
from it, in fact. We don’t use many
hard-to-find ingredients because I want
people to cook this food at home on a
regular basis. That is why I created
Comptoir. Obviously the customer
comes first, but from an operational
standpoint it’s good that the dishes are
not complicated because it’s easier to
train staff and roll out. We leave the more
sexy dinner party stuff to Yotam
[Ottolenghi, the celebrated Israeli-born
chef]. I think he is amazing and has done
wonders for Middle Eastern food in this
country, but we’re offering something
more everyman and everyday.”
Kitous takes his ambassadorial role
seriously and can sometimes be
exhaustingly evangelical: he is clearly a
canny businessman and skilled
restaurateur but he keeps our
conversation focused on the bigger
picture, specifically his dream of a high
street with as many Lebanese
restaurants as Italian ones.
“I always compare Lebanese food to
Italian food. After all it’s a Mediterranean
cuisine,” he says. “A lot of people don’t
realise this. It’s fresh, healthy food.
There’s no reason we can’t do as well as
the Italians in this game.”
Kitous is so preoccupied with Italy’s
well-documented success in the branded
arena that he has engineered some of his
dishes to go head-to-head with Italian
staples. There’s mana’esh – a circular flat
bread that’s sliced and eaten like a pizza
– and a rather good ensemble of
tomatoes, grilled halloumi and fresh
mint leaves conceived by Kitous as an
alternative to a Caprese salad.
The rest of Comptoir’s menu reads like
a greatest hits of Middle Eastern cuisine
containing the likes of hummus, baba
ghanoush, tabbouleh and falafel, all
preparations that originated in and
around the Levant. Mains include tagines
(borrowed from Morocco), wraps, salads
and the aforementioned mana’esh.
Prices are accessible with mezze dishes
from £2.50 and most mains under £8.
“These dishes aren’t trendy,” Kitous
says firmly as we go through the menu.
“This year won’t be the year of Lebanese
food. We’ve been making this stuff for
thousands of years. I don’t want to be the
hottest new thing and don’t even get me
started on street food. That term has
been horribly abused by the industry.
Most of our dishes are home-style food
but there is some crossover with those
dishes that started life on the street.”
The item that Kitous is most
enthusiastic about is the shawarma, the
usually meat-filled sandwich that’s a key
part of Comptoir’s menu and the core
focus of Shawa, the fast-casual concept
he opened in Westfield London in 2009.
Made to order with a range of salads
and sauces in front of a customer, the
product is similar to the burrito in terms
of both operations and price point.
“The US has done very well with
burritos but they are heavy and full of
carbs. Shawarma is healthy fast food,”
says Kitous.
His logic is sound. Shawarma is
currently taking large swathes of the US
and Canada by storm and the average UK
punter is more familiar with the
(comparable) kebab than their
transatlantic counterparts. The tricky bit,
Kitous explains, is severing the
association with booze-fuelled late-night
eating. “Unfortunately, kebabs are
something people eat when they’re out
on the piss. But if we can get it right,
Shawa could be much bigger than
Comptoir. But we’re a small team. I’d
rather not do it than do it badly.”
Kitous has been talking about
expanding Shawa for a few years and
two more are slated to open this year.
Comptoir, meanwhile, might have
expanded slowly since it launched at
Westfield London, but it retains its status
as a brand to watch. The business has
been approached numerous times by
investors, but for now at least Kitous and
managing director Chaker Hanna are
content to expand slowly with the help
of NatWest and a healthy cashflow. Next
month, a 11th Comptoir will open at the
new Broadgate Circus development near
Liverpool Street station alongside
Yauatcha, ETM Group and Aubaine.
The past few years have seen the
brand probe the market outside central
London with openings in Heathrow and
Gatwick airports and – more significantly
– a branch in Kingston-upon-Thames.
Kitous says the latter is taking longer to
bed in than its Zone 1 siblings but he’s
happy with its performance. Comptoir is
in legals for a site in Manchester, and
Kitous expects three further Comptoirs
to open this year.
While PizzaExpress et al won’t be
losing any sleep just yet, Kitous’
boundless enthusiasm for Lebanese food
looks set to see Comptoir become a truly
national player. As he says, everybody
has a tub of hummus in the fridge, so
why not?
Comptoir Libanais is a member of
Restaurant’s R200 Club. For information
on joining the club simply contact
joanne.horton@wrbm.com
Med-led dining: Lebanese
food can compete with
Italian according to Kitous
Levant
Restaurants
Group
at a glance
Founded: 2000
Number Sites: 13
(10 Comptoir
Libanais, Levant,
Kenza, Shawa)
Website:
www.
comptoirlibanais.
com